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M 






FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT 



Books by 

ilamilton OTirigJjt JWabie 

My Study Fire 

Under the Trees and Elsewhere 
Short Studies in Literature 
Essays in Literary Interpretation 
My Study Fire, Second Series 
Essays on Nature and Culture 
Essays on Books and Culture 
Essays on Work and Culture 
The Life of the Spirit 
Norse Stories 
Works and Days 
The Great Word 
Christmas To-day 
Introductions to Notable Poems 
Fruits of the Spirit 
In the Forest of Arden. Illustrated 
My Study Fire. Illustrated 
Under the Trees. Illustrated 
A Child of Nature. Illustrated 
Norse Stories. Illustrated 
Nature and Culture. Illustrated 



FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT 



BY 
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

LYMAN ABBOTT 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1917 






Copyright. 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 

1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916 

By DODD. mead AND COMPANY, Inc. 



/ 



MAY -2 1917 



n!,A4G0561 



PREFATORY NOTE 

These essays have appeared in the edi- 
torial columns of The Outlook from time 
to time for several years past. The 
present volume is the result of a desire, 
frequently expressed, that the timely mes- 
sages so fully reflecting the author's loy- 
alty to his country, and his love for his 
fellow men in their highest destinies, 
should be grouped in convenient form 
in order to perpetuate the potent influ- 
ence they are known to have exerted upon 
the conduct and thought of many people. 
Their wide range brings them into touch 
with eager youth seeking inspiration; 
with those weary in well-doing, needing 
encouragement; with those bringing the 
fruits of experience to enrich the activi- 
ties of our busy age ; and with those who 
face the sunset in serene quiet. Here 



Prefatory Note 

all may find breadth of vision, renewed 
courage, clearer insight into the com- 
plexities of life, and profound spiritual 
meanings. 

It is significant that the latest essays, 
written in 191 6, during a period of great 
physical depression, are concerned with 
the fundamentals of faith, action and 
achievement. The titles seem to form 
themselves into a triumphant progres- 
sion, " Character First," *' Meeting Life 
Squarely," "What Can I Do?" and 
" The Test of Courage." They would 
march steadily on vibrant with the belief 
in the ultimate victory of good, and of 
God, a belief that inspired every word 
from the pen now laid down in the calm 
assurance of perfect realization. 



VI 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Truest Commemoration . . . i 

Under the Aspect of Eternity . . 6 
The Practice of Immortality . . .13 

Who Are the Experts? .... 22 

A Saint of To-Day 27 

The Mask of the Years .... 34 

Love and Work 42 

A Text from Luther 49 

The Escape from Fear 54 

Praying and Waiting 59 

The Bugle Call 62 

The Upper Room 68 

The Price of Immortality ... 73 

Light in the Darkness .... 79 

Stirring the Will 84 

Life, Growth, and Heaven ... 88 

The Ultimate Companionship . . 98 

The Prophecy of Love 105 

The Great Refusal iii 



Contents 

PAGE 

Discredited Witnesses 119 

" There Are No Dead " . . . . 126 

The Larger Plan 132 

Lovers Second Sight 137 

The Child and the World . . .145 
The Deepest Thanksgiving . . .153 

Lodgings and Homes 157 

Love and Law 164 

The Best Service 172 

A Secret of Youth 178 

Make the Time You Want . . .184 

A Tragedy OF THE Good 188 

Simplicity of Life 193 

By-Products in Life 202 

The Value of Appreciation . . . 207 

Immortal Love 212 

The Wisdom of Youth .... 220 

Making Opportunities 226 

Face to Face 231 

The Last Vigil 235 

Light on the Way 241 

The Loneliness of Life .... 245 
The Credibility of Love . . . .251 
The Easter Vision 259 



Contents 

PAGE 

The Plus Sign 268 

Going Home 273 

The Mystery of Heaven . . . .277 
The Possibility of Great Giving . . 283 
The Long View of Life .... 287 

An Easter Thought 291 

The Path to God 298 

The Peace of Christ 304 

Character First 309 

Meeting Life Squarely . . . .314 

What Can I Do? 318 

The Test of Courage 322 



HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE 

No one disciple of Christ can give all 
that his Master gave. But each one of 
us can by his life and teaching give to 
his own circle some portion of the mes- 
sage which the Master gave to the world. 
I have a friend whose inexhaustible en- 
ergy and enthusiasm of service always 
says, though quite unconsciously, to every 
one he meets: " Son, go to work to-day 
in my vineyard." I had another friend, 
not living now, whose serene temper and 
reposeful spirit always said: *' Come ye 
yourselves apart and rest awhile." Her 
home was to every guest that entered it 
like the arbor which Christian found In 
his climb up the Hill Difficulty. The 
message which Hamilton Wright Mable 
brought to those who knew him with any 
intimacy was, " I have come that they 
xi 



Introduction 

might have life and that they might have 
it more abundantly." 

Not that he was extraordinarily ac- 
tive ; not that he was in the least character- 
ized by that bustling energy which is at 
once the virtue and the vice of the Ameri- 
can. I do not recall that I ever saw him 
in a hurry. On the contrary, if I were 
to select a single word to indicate, not 
perhaps his most distinguishing, but his 
most apparent characteristic, I should 
choose the word " reposeful." In one of 
his essays he writes, " The man who Is 
in haste is always out of relation to 
things. . . . His haste Implies malad- 
justment; It means that he has blundered, 
or that he is inadequate to the task he 
has assumed." Some scientist has ^old 
us that there Is more power in an acre 
of forest trees than in any ordinary man- 
ufacturing town with all its bustle and 
noise. I use the word life as Bergson 
uses It, as Sir Oliver Lodge uses It, as 
Mr. Mabie himself In another of his es- 
says has used it. 

xli 



Introduction 

'' There is, therefore, in every bit of life, no- 
ble or ignoble, beautiful or repulsive, great or 
small, traces of a thought, evidences of an order, 
lines of design. Every bit of life is a bit of 
revelation; it brings us face to face with the 
great mystery and the great secret. In every 
such disclosure we are not only looking at our- 
selves, but we are catching a glimpse of God. 
All revelation of life has the spell, therefore, of 
a discovery. We hold our breath when we 
hear a great line on the stage for the first time, 
or come upon it in a book, because we are dis- 
covering something; we are awed and hushed 
because we are looking into the mystery. There 
is the thrill, the wonder, the joy of seeing an- 
other link in the invisible chain which binds us 
to the past and unites us to the future." 

" In every bit of life " : that is a phrase 
very characteristic of Mr. Mable's writ- 
ing because It was characteristic of his 
experience. 

He lived In the world and rejoiced In 
all that It had to give him. He had 
neither the medlseval nor the Puritan 
conscience; to him nothing was taboo. 
He had no sympathy with the doctrine 
of Thomas a Kempis that one must 
xiii 



Introduction 

choose between this world and the next. 
He believed that the Father had made 
both worlds and had given them both to 
his children to enjoy. He believed with 
Paul that " all things are yours; whether 
Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the 
world, or life, or death, or things pres- 
ent, or things to come; all are yours'': 
all teachers, all material things, all hu- 
man faculties and activities, the present 
world, death the gateway to a larger life, 
and the world to come. 

This fullness of life defined and de- 
termined his literary judgments. 

Talne has said that as behind the fossil 
there was an animal so behind the folio 
there was a life. It was this life behind 
the printed page which Interested Mr. 
Mable. Language was to him but the 
tool by which thought and feeling are 
expressed. He was skillful In the use 
of this tool, and he had a mild Interest 
In the skill with which other word art- 
ists used their tool. But his vital Inter- 
est was not in their tool but in their mes- 
xiv 



Introduction 

sage. Literature appealed to him be- 
cause it was an interpretation of life — 
not merely of the life of the author, but 
the life of his age or, in the case of a 
few of the greatest authors, the life of 
all the ages. He himself was an inter- 
preter rather than a critic, and was more 
concerned to enable his readers to see life 
through the author's eyes than to give 
them a judgment on the question whether 
the author had given his interpretation 
skillfully. 

Mr. Mabie was more than a literary 
critic, and he was more than a literary 
interpreter. He was Interested both in 
nature and in humanity, because he saw 
in both an expression of what he has 
called " The Universal Life." Nature 
is both a machine and a book. The scien- 
tific mind is Interested In Nature's me- 
chanical aspects and Its material values; 
for example. In finding and realizing the 
practical value of electricity as a means 
of carrying our message and giving light 
to our homes. Mr. Mabie was inter- 

XV 



Introduction 

ested In Nature as an interpretation of 
that Infinite and Eternal Energy from 
which all things proceed, and in detect- 
ing the unity of man and nature, not by 
interpreting man as a mechanical toy 
but by interpreting nature as a body in 
which dwells a life-giving spirit. God, 
he sa-id, " is the force which permeates 
Nature and gives her forms their mean- 
ing and their beauty; and this also is the 
force which lifts humanity out of the 
dust and gives It its dignity and oppor- 
tunity. ... So every bit of Nature, 
stone, fish, bird, or leaf, becomes pre- 
cious; they are all parts of a whole; they 
are links in a chain. Seen in the light 
of this sublime discovery all matter is 
penetrated with thought. In like man- 
ner, through human life In all its forms, 
under all Its conditions. In all stages of 
its unfolding, a great thought or order 
is being wrought out." 

It was this almost oriental faith In the 
unity of life which gave Mr. Mable his 
Interest in social problems. Economics, 
xvi 



Introduction 

sociology, politics, were interesting to 
him mainly because they were human 
problems, because In them, as seen in ac- 
tual human conditions, they showed how 
a great thought or order is being wrought 
out. The goal which he saw and to 
which he believed all transitions, all strug- 
gles, all revolutions, are gradually lead- 
ing the human race is a divinely predes- 
tined human brotherhood. It was this 
too that made him a universal friend. 
He desired to help not merely the lame, 
the halt, and the blind out of their handi- 
cap; he desired to do what he could to 
promote the gradual creation of an or- 
derly world out of chaos. He was a 
brother In this universal but imperfectly 
developed brotherhood because " good or 
evil, high or low, Illustrious or obscure, 
( all human lives disclose something above 
and beyond them.'' ') 

This same spirit of abundant life char- 
acterized his religious experience. He 
regarded all theologies, all liturgies, all 
ecclesiastical organizations, as Instru- 
Xvii 



Introduction 

ments either to express or to promote the 
spiritual life. He was always a loyal 
member of the Episcopal communion and 
In his later life active and influential in 
the organization. But he never identi- 
fied himself with any of the parties in 
that communion.^ I have often heard 
him say that the' Church of Christ ought 
to be large enough to embrace men of all 
opinions and all temperaments. ; He be- 
lieved that the bond of union and the test 
of fellowship should be, not agreement 
upon a dogma, but loyalty to a Person, 
not Intellectual nor emotional, but vital. 

For nearly forty years Hamilton W. 
Mable and I worked together as brothers 
in an educational enterprise. We came 
of different ancestry and possessed dif- 
ferent temperaments. I was a child of 
Puritan ancestry, he a son of the Church; 
I was temperamentally philosophical, he 
was temperamentally poetical. But a 
mystical faith in the unseen united us in a 
friendship which strengthened and deep- 
ened with the passing years. We not 
xviii 



Introduction 

only shared In each other's work, we were 
companions In each other's sorrows. 
Each profoundly affected the other's life. 
This etching Is of my friend as I under- 
stood him. Doubtless It will seem er- 
roneous to some, Inadequate to others. 
But I hope It may serve to help many 
readers to get from his pen something of 
the Illumination and Inspiration which I 
derived from him through a very sacred 
personal friendship. 

Lyman Abbott. 



XiX 



FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT 



Fruits of the Spirit 

The Truest Commemoration 

MEMORIALS of every kind in every 
age and country bear witness to 
the depth and tenderness of human love 
and to its guardianship of the memory of 
those who have passed beyond its care 
into the keeping of the Eternal Love. 
Passionate grief, despair, dumb submis- 
sion, victorious faith, have found expres- 
sion in every form that art could devise 
— beautiful, stately, tender. Great lead- 
ers, daring soldiers, saints, prophets, 
poets, statesmen, women whose loveli- 
ness made the air about them sweet and 
warm, young girls in whose charm all 
that was sweetest in nature and most ap- 
pealing in prediction of the richer growth 
to come, little children holding the pil- 
grim's staff like a toy in their hands — 
I 



Fruits of the Spirit 

for each and all there are memorials 
which record the wealth of achievement 
or promise that went with them out of 
the world. 

To be surrounded by the visible me- 
morials of those who have gone before 
is to have continually present the sense 
of the unbroken life of the race, of the 
line of descent from parent to child in 
continuous generations, of the unity of 
those who have passed through the edu- 
cation of earth and those who are learn- 
ing its lessons as best they can, of the 
fellowship of that invisible host of wit- 
nesses which gives human struggle its im- 
mense spiritual significance. As children 
ought everywhere to read the story, not 
of their country's wealth and power, but 
of its heroes, its courage, Its achievements 
In the emancipation of the human spirit, 
so ought every child to come Into con- 
sciousness of the ties that bind the latest 
to the earliest men and women in vital 
and unescapable relationship In the fa- 
therhood of God and the brotherhood of 



The Truest Commemoration 

Christ, by memorials on every side of 
those who have made life great, rich, 
pure, tender, and fruitful. If they whom 
we call the dead have escaped out of 
sleep and are now alive in a fullness of 
life which " it hath not entered into the 
mind of man to conceive," then, surely, 
they who remain to endure and struggle 
toward the light ought to be lifted up by 
the companionship of the vast company 
who have achieved freedom and harmony 
of deed with thought and of reality with 
vision. 

There Is one form of memorial, how- 
ever, that all love and sorrow must 
take if they are to touch the heart of 
this living relationship which death only 
brings into clearer light, and which bears 
the same relation to all forms of honor 
to those who have gone before that rites, 
ceremonies, splendor of structure, costli- 
ness of gifts, bear to the complete service 
of God: it is the honor that we express 
in our own lives. The heroic are most 
nobly commemorated by heroism in deed 
3 



Fruits of the Spirit 

rather than in stone; the pure are best 
kept in mind by a new purity in the 
hearts that remember; greatness of serv- 
ice and nobility of nature by the quick- 
ening of all that is unselfish and self-sac- 
rificing in those who guard the memory 
of a life once hidden by its very loveliness 
and now hidden in the light of God. 
It is the unbroken continuity of influence 
and power that bears witness to the 
vital family relationship of the present 
with the farthest past; it is the bequest 
not of rank or arms or property that 
affirms the honorable descent of those 
who remain from those who have gone; 
it is rather the quickened sense of honor, 
of loyalty, of the service due in all love 
from the fortunate to the unfortunate. 
This is the spiritual remembrance that 
must be sweeter to those whom it com- 
memorates than statues or tablets or 
blazened windows; here, too, sorrow 
finds the path to peace through action^ 
Not often has this highest form of re- 
membrance, this refuge for the sorrow- 
4 



The Truest Commemoration 

ful, been more simply and strongly 
brought to mind than in this letter from 
Charles Godfrey Leland to a friend: 

... It is truly with grief I learn that a great 
loss has befallen you. As regards terrible be- 
reavements there is but one thing to do wisely 
— to draw nearer to those who remain or what- 
ever is near and dear to us in life, and love 
them the more, and become gentler and better 
ourselves, making more of what is left. There 
are people who wail and grieve incessantly and 
neglect the living to extravagance. It seems 
always as if they attracted further losses and 
deeper miseries. Weak and simple minds grieve 
most — melancholy becomes a kind of painful 
indulgence, and finally a deadly habit. Work 
is the great remedy. I think a great deal of the 
old Northern belief that if we lament too much 
the dead, they cannot rest in their graves and 
are tormented by our tears. It is a pity that 
the number of our years is not wTitten on our 
foreheads when we are born. Keep up your 
heart, work hard, live in hope . . . study — 
there is a great deal in you. As in China, we 
ennoble the dead by ennobling ourselves. 



Under the Aspect of Eternity 

MEN suffer immense loss of reserve 
power for dealing with the work 
and problems of the time, and of deep- 
flowing consolation in their sorrows and 
anxieties, by reason of their intense 
absorption in the interests of the hour 
and their preoccupation with affairs. 
Never before has this present life laid 
hold upon conscience, thought and will 
with such searching and compelling 
forces. Those who are eager to deal 
with life on the highest plane find it diffi- 
cult to penetrate the multitude of details 
that press upon attention with the sense 
of a greater order in which all things 
find their place and are moved to some 
great end. Work of such magnitude 
awaits capable men, and taxes thought 
and strength to such a degree that many 
men put such heroic labor into the day 
that night overtakes them unawares, and 
they awake with surprise to find that their 
6 



Under the Aspect of Eternity 

work Is only a part of a gigantic scheme 
of construction. Their tasks have ab- 
sorbed them so completely that they have 
never realized their relations to a, spirit- 
ual order. This Is a far more fruitful way 
of life than that of the man who dreams 
of purely spiritual activities but never sets 
his hand to any real task or binds on his 
shoulders any of the burdens which hu- 
manity must carry in Its mysterious jour- 
ney toward the unseen country. 

To preach Idleness, withdrawal from 
the world, escape from the manifold tasks 
of modern society, to men who have be- 
come heroic workers by virtue of the 
inward force which makes them men and 
the outward opportunities with which 
God has encircled them to draw out 
their power and evoke character on a 
vast scale, Is as Idle as to command them 
to go back to the Ptolemaic astronomy 
or the geography that was studied before 
Columbus enlarged the world by the dis- 
covery of another continent. There Is 
no solution of the problem of the soul 
7 



Fruits of the Spirit 

by taking it out of its normal relations in 
human society; there can be no return 
to the patriarchal days when men lived in 
tents and watched their flocks and spent 
their days in a vast leisure of mind; nor 
to those middle years In the history of 
the human spirit when they lived in 
little walled towns and served their kings 
and obeyed their spiritual rulers with 
unthinking obedience. There must be 
room for the spirit and time for its ripen- 
ing, but these conditions must be secured 
not by going back but by going forward. 
It would be well if the preoccupied 
men and women of to-day would take 
time to read Dante's " Divine Comedy; " 
to climb from time to time that great peak 
which o'ertops the poetry of the world. 
Probably no form of expression could be 
further from the habitual thought and 
speech of the day than this report of the 
journey of the soul through the three 
worlds; but no modern writing Is so clear 
and authoritative in its setting of the life 
that now is in definite and unescapable re- 
8 



Under the Aspect of Eternity 

latlon to the Hfe which is to come. In 
this sublime epic of the soul of man in all 
conditions there is no idle dreaming, no 
vague and easy speculation concerning the 
growth of the spirit and its union with 
God; on the contrary, the poem stands 
foursquare to all the winds of shifting 
opinion, based on an eternal order, per- 
vaded throughout by a vivid realism. The 
poet escaped, by virtue of his genius, from 
the tyranny of types and personifications 
which gave unreality to much mediaeval 
art, and built a world as solid as the 
Florence which drove him Into exile. No 
other poet of the heavenly vision has 
dared to give his interpretation of the life 
of man such massive reality and none has 
touched it with such compelling power. 

For this reason, among others, Dante 
is a teacher at whose feet the men and 
women of this busy age ought to sit; he 
is no master of beautiful dreams, no 
magician dexterously spinning a web of 
iridescent words over the abysses; he 
sees real things with clear and fearless 
P 



Fruits of the Spirit 

glance, and he teaches us not to evade, 
to escape, to renounce, to comfort and 
mislead ourselves with idle visions, but 
to look at the great facts of life, to ac- 
cept Its duties, do Its work, live in its 
relations, in the light of the world to 
come. He has, as Dean Church has 
said, " too strong a sense of the reality 
of this familiar life to reduce it merely 
to a shadow and type of the unseen. 
What he struggles to express in countless 
ways, with all the resources of his strange 
and gigantic power, is, that this world and 
the next are both equally real, and both 
one." In a word, Dante saw the world 
" under the aspect of eternity." 

In that attitude is found our escape 
from the tyranny of the tremendous tasks 
laid on the shoulders of modern men by 
the growth of power within and without. 
It is impossible to go back to the more 
leisurely periods when interests were few 
and simple; if it were possible we 
should not win the victory and find the 
peace which our souls crave. These 

IQ 



Under the Aspect of Eternity 

things are not gifts from God to be had 
for the asking; they are achievements 
which we must make by conquest of 
ourselves and our conditions. The prob- 
lem of life is never one of external 
conditions; it is always one of inward 
energy, purity, nobility. The way out 
for those who would live the life of the 
spirit in this age of tumultuous activity is 
to realize hour by hour that the life that 
now is and the life that is to come, how- 
ever different in condition and occupation, 
are parts of one indivisible and unbroken 
life; It is to see the world steadily and 
clearly " under the aspect of eternity." 

It does not matter how vast the works 
of the time are, If In accepting their 
reality we understand how subordinate 
they are in the spiritual order; it does 
not matter how heavy the burdens of 
society are if we carry them with the 
conviction that they are part of that 
spiritual discipline which Is the rational 
and inspiring explanation of life. The 
world that surrounds us Is not a mirage; 
II 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Is a deep-going and unescapable reality, 
and woe to the man or woman who tries 
to ignore it, to treat it as a figment of 
the imagination, to escape from it. But 
that which is visible Is only a little sec- 
tion of the whole as the earth which 
seems so vast to us is only a little star 
in a universe of suns. When a man 
sees through the material which piles 
itself about him to the spiritual which is 
Its master; when he rules all the works 
of his hands by virtue of the sovereignty 
of his soul; puts his hand to his task 
and gives his whole strength to it because 
It Is a reality In vital relation with a 
greater reality; gains wealth with full 
knowledge that money can buy many 
things for his body, but nothing for his 
spirit; organizes great enterprises, with 
clear understanding that he Is the serv- 
ant of an irresistible movement In human 
affairs, he Is safe from the blindness, 
corruption, deadness of mere material 
activity and achievement; he has learned 
to see life " under the aspect of eternity." 

12 



The Practice of Immortality 

THE gains which men and women 
have made in self-control, under- 
standing of life, beauty and nobihty of 
character, have been secured by those who 
have lived in advance of the standards of 
their time. In most cases the separation 
has not been so great as to involve the 
tragedy of persecution, but sometimes it 
has led straight to the hemlock, the block, 
or the cross. In every generation and 
in every country there has been a group 
of those upon whom the light of the 
morning rested and who have pressed on 
into the new day. They were not re- 
formers in the sense of aggressively at- 
tacking the things in which they did not 
believe; they were always so intent on 
bringing into their lives the power of 
higher ideals that they served their fel- 
lows best, not by what they destroyed, 
but by what they revealed and made 
13 



Fruits of the Spirit 

credible. To many who surrounded 
them those eager seekers for the better 
hfe seemed to be pursuing dreams as 
evanescent as the rainbow and seeking 
ends as unreal as the pot of gold that lies 
concealed where the arch of radiant mist 
rests on the ground. But the mountains 
stand distinct and Immovable, though the 
near-sighted do not see them; to the far- 
sighted they are as real and solid as the 
earth beneath their feet. 

Men have followed dreams and fallen 
In a vain though not always barren 
pursuit of them; but those who see fur- 
ther than their fellows and live In the 
larger relations which their vision reveals 
to them are of all men most rational. 
One need not wait for the banishment 
of greed from society to practice unself- 
ishness; one need not wait for a clean 
and civilized legal treatment of marriage 
relations to keep the home pure and 
sacred; one need not wait until public 
life is cleansed from dishonesty to serve 
his fellows with a heart that knows no 
14 



The Practice of Immortality 

treachery to the great interests of the 
nation and with hands that have never 
taken bribes; one need not wait until 
war is abolished to live the life of peace 
that rests on the love of God expressed 
in the love of man. Society is made up 
of those who live by the standards of the 
day and of those who live by the stand- 
ards of to-morrow; and the real dreamers 
are those who accept things as they are; 
the followers after the higher realities 
are those who have wakened out of sleep 
and have looked upon life as it is. To 
these clear-sighted men and women the 
standards they recognize are made more 
definite and commanding by living as if 
these standards were already univers- 
ally accepted; and they gradually con- 
form their aims and deeds to these higher 
requirements, and are more alive than 
their fellows because they are in touch 
with a greater number of real things. 

The discussion of the credibility of 
immortality has its uses and becomes 
imperative from time to time; but the 
15 



Fruits of the Spirit 

final demonstration of this great fact is 
never made as the result of a process of 
reasoning; it Is ultimately and convinc- 
ingly revealed in the experience. Those 
who do not know Immortality as a fact 
of experience often have opinions about 
it, but can never have knowledge of it; 
and when that knowledge has been 
attained, all the argument in the world 
will disturb the faith which springs out 
of it as little as the skepticism of the 
short-sighted will disturb those who see 
the mountains whenever they lift their 
eyes. The fact that many good and true 
men and women doubt the Immortality 
of the soul has no more weight with those 
who have learned it by experience than 
has the inability of the good and true to 
appreciate music power to disturb the 
faith or destroy the joy of those who 
know that Beethoven has as authentic a 
voice as Shakespeare, and that the " Sym- 
phony Pathetlque," has as real and sub- 
stantial a cry from the soul of Russia 
as was Dostoyevskl's '* Poor Folk." 
i6 



The Practice of Immortality 

Immortality is not a future state; it 
IS a present condition. It is not a gift to 
be conferred hereafter; it is power in- 
herent in the human soul. It is not a 
fact to be proved by logical demonstra- 
tion any more than the reality of the life 
of which we are now conscious ; it is not 
a truth to be revealed in some remote 
heaven; it is a fact to be accepted as 
life is accepted, and to be lived as life 
is lived in thought, emotion, and action. 
If we would know immortality, we must 
write it on our hearts that we are now 
immortal; if we would get the peace 
and joy of it, we must rest securely in it; 
if we would have it become steadily more 
real, commanding, and inspiring, we 
must live as immortals. 

For immortality is no more a dream 
than are those higher realities which 
have led aspiring souls in every genera- 
tion step by step upward. We have 
gone only a little way in the full unfold- 
ing of the human spirit, but we have 
gone so far that our commonplace reali- 
17 



Fruits of the. Spirit 

ties of the relations of man with man 
would have seemed to our remote ances- 
tors like the Idle dreams of children, to 
be laughed to scorn by all men who 
wished to deal with life as It is. They 
have not discovered that life Is a differ- 
ent matter to each succeeding genera- 
tion; that, In the sense of a reality which 
Is the same everywhere and to all, there 
Is no such thing as "' life as It Is." Life 
was one thing to Socrates and another 
to Cleon; one thing to Judas and an- 
other to the Christ; one thing to Lincoln 
and another to Burr. Does any one 
question which kind of life was the larg- 
est and most real? 

It Is Idle to tell the man who prac- 
tices a virtue above the standard of his 
time that he is a dreamer; he knows 
what has actually happened In his own 
experience; he knows that he Is living 
In a larger world than the doubters and 
skeptics; and he knows that the virtue 
he strives to attain Is real because he 
practices It. 

i8 



The Practice of Immortality 

In like manner, the men and women 
who have dreamed what Dr. Gladden 
has finely called " the practice of immor- 
tality " are not dreaming of a possible 
revelation to be made hereafter; they are 
living now in a larger view of the world, 
and acting day by day in the light of 
present knowledge. They do not search 
the books for arguments in support of 
the truth of immortality, nor are they 
disturbed by the fluctuation of opinion 
regarding it; they are absorbed in the 
practice of it. They think of themselves 
always as immortal; they live day by 
day in the immediate presence of that 
spiritual order in this present stage of 
life which, though invisible, constantly 
and with increasing clearness bears wit- 
ness to itself in current history; they 
strive in all their intercourse with others 
to bear themselves as immortals and to 
reverence their fellows as sharers in the 
great gift of life; they make immortality 
credible by purity, helpfulness, and fer- 
tility; by courage, calmness, and the 
19 



Fruits of the Spirit 

sweetness that streams from a great 
vision become the feeder of character; 
they think always of those who have 
passed through the Gate of Death as 
possessed of a more vital and tran- 
scendent life; "it is the dead only 
who really live, It is we who are dying; " 
if It comforts and freshens their sense of 
the reality of the one life elsewhere, they 
pray for those who have gone on as 
freely and confidently as for those who 
remain; they think of the whole universe, 
visible and invisible, as the home in 
which God lives; of life as one and in- 
divisible; of Immortality as a present 
possession, and of its practice as its only 
real evidence and demonstration; they 
find no incredible mystery in the empty 
tomb from which the Christ walked un- 
harmed, because in thought, word, and 
deed he lived as an immortal from the 
hour of his birth to the hour of his as- 
cension. 

And in all this they are no more 
dreamers than is the man In the little 
20 



The Practice of Immortality 

remote country village who by education 
and travel has so widened his relations 
that he lives in the world instead of the 
place where he does his work, finds his 
shelter, and takes his daily rest; than the 
man who, in this present stage of war, 
greed, and selfishness, lives in the reality 
of a nobler age as surely coming out of 
the travail of to-day as this age of spirit- 
ual and moral striving has come out of 
the age of barbarism, lust, and fear. 



21 



Who are the Experts? 

THE Christ story, which the world 
loves even in its most skeptical 
moments, curiously relates itself to the 
highest moods of the spirit, and its sym- 
bolism has an interior and convincing re- 
lation with the aspirations and hopes of 
men. One determining element in the 
discovery of spiritual and moral truth is 
strangely overlooked in our processes of 
investigation, and that is purity of life 
and harmony with its invisible order. In 
every other field of knowledge we de- 
mand the most sensitive and accurate 
instruments of observation. The appli- 
ances which equip our laboratories are 
made with the nicest art and kept with 
the most painstaking care. Mechanism 
of exquisite delicacy of construction 
registers the faintest perturbation of 
earth or air; microscopes of the highest 
power reinforce the eye; telescopes, 

22 



Who Are the Experts? 

planted where vibration is at the mini- 
mum and clarity of air at the maximum, 
record the movements of stars on the 
far boundaries of space and analyze the 
fires that burn in the suns; the authority 
of the observer depends on the perfec- 
tion of his vision; one of the foremost 
astronomers of the time owes his emi- 
nence to his extraordinary power of sight; 
physicians build great reputations on the 
intelligence which resides in their finger- 
tips and the acuteness of their faculty 
of hearing. In all other fields of knowl- 
edge we insist on special qualifications 
and peculiar gifts, and insist that the 
expert shall keep the organs he uses in 
the most perfect condition. If he vio- 
lates the laws of health and his hand 
loses its steadiness, his eye its clear- 
sighted and far-sighted vision, his ear its 
acuteness, we set him aside as we set 
aside the instrument or mechanism that 
has lost its perfect adjustment. When an 
observer falls into this condition, his au- 
thority departs, and he no longer counts 
23 



Fruits of the Spirit 

among the instruments of research. 
When it comes to the world of spiritual 
knowledge, however, where the most 
delicate and sensitive instruments of 
observation are required, we forget the 
tests which science has taught us and 
we in turn apply to science, and Hsten 
to the reports of any man or woman who 
lays claim to that gift of prophecy which 
is the knowledge of invisible things, 
without looking at his or her credentials. 
The man in the street does not assume 
to know astronomy, and if he did we 
should give him small shrift of attention ; 
but when the same man begins to speak 
of things which involve rare qualities of 
mind and character, we listen as to an 
oracle. Spiritual things are spiritually 
discerned; men and women of spiritual 
genius and of moral achievements alone 
speak with authority on these great 
matters. The faculty of spiritual obser- 
vation rests primarily on harmony with 
those laws of health which are the 
expression of right relations to the uni- 
34 



Who Are the Experts? 

verse. The man who violates these laws, 
whatever his gifts of mind may be, is as 
little entitled to credence when he speaks 
of spiritual things as is the astronomer 
when his sight has failed or the physician 
when his hearing has become dull. The 
only expert in the knowledge of the 
spiritual order is the man who has kept 
his faculty of observation in the highest 
condition; but we take our views of life 
from moral invalids, from the morally 
insane, from those whose hands are 
incapable of steadiness, whose sight is a 
half blindness and whose hearing is a 
partial deafness. 

There are scores of books in our 
libraries which assume to reveal the 
invisible order of life to us, to interpret 
that life, and to put the key to the mys- 
tery in our hands, which are mere tran- 
scriptions of temperament, reflections of 
moods, revelations of abnormal individ- 
ual experience; and we accept these 
purely personal reports of moral and 
spiritual phenomena as If they were 
as 



Fruits of the Spirit 

authoritative reflections of that vast 
order which reveals itself only to the 
sane, the humble, the pure in heart. 
The work of a diseased man of genius 
often possesses the fascination which 
resides in pathology, and often imparts 
the joy of art; but it is a personal mem- 
orandum and not a record of universal 
truth. The exaltation of personality, 
which is one of the great notes of mod- 
ern as contrasted with ancient literature, 
and the immense emphasis on the au- 
thority of individuality in a democratic 
society, have given us a vast, rich litera- 
ture which is of the highest importance 
as a disclosure of what is in man, but 
some of which has not authority as a 
revelation of what life is in its fuUness, 
nor of a man in the highest reaches of his 
nature. A man of genius who is insane 
is vastly more interesting than a com- 
monplace lunatic, but they are both mad; 
and the ravings and illusions of an entire 
asylum do not count against the word of 
one sane man. 

26 



A Saint of To-Day 

EVERY age has Its saints, but It 
often happens that an age does not 
recognize Its holy men and women until 
the light of Immortality Interprets them. 
This lack of discernment Is due, not to 
any unwillingness to see, but to the ten- 
acity of accepted forms and ways of ex- 
pression. Sainthood Is still identified in 
many minds with asceticism, and the 
saint who appears among us, living In 
all the great human relations, bearing 
the common lot, speaking the universal 
human speech, passes on her way un- 
noticed because those who surround and 
love her are looking for the mediaeval 
dress, the withdrawal from the world, 
the crossed hands, the downcast eyes. 
Blessed are the saints who sought holi- 
ness, In other times, In escape from the 
world, and became types of the pure 
and good In ages of violence, passion, 
and corruption. In Its calendar of 
27 



Fruits of the Spirit 

saints, as in its tender and reverent 
regard for the mother of Christ, the 
Roman Cathohc Church has recognized 
and responded to a deep and wholesome 
human instinct. Men need the vision 
of holy men and women walking stain- 
less along the perilous ways of life, 
indifferent to petty ambitions, lifted 
above the pride of place and power, 
consecrated to purity, to righteousness, 
to sweetness, and to service; the beau- 
tiful company of those whose lives are 
revelations of the heart of the Infinite, 
and upon whom, amid the shadows of 
time, the light of Immortality visibly rests. 
But these stainless and radiant spirits 
have not ceased to walk among men 
because Ideals of service have changed 
their forms and the active modern age 
has succeeded the meditative Middle 
Age. The saint of to-day Is not less 
saintly because she wears no distinctive 
garb and seeks no refuge from the 
storms of life. In all the ways of life 
to-day, in every field of work, In a 
38 



A Saint of To-Day 

thousand obscure households, there are 
saints who are loved, but who are not 
recognized. To know the saint under 
all garbs is, perhaps, to have something 
in one's self which responds to holiness; 
to possess something akin in its possi- 
bilities, though not in its development, 
to salntllness. In any event, to know 
the saint when she comes among us is 
not only to render what Is due of rever- 
ence, but to receive most fully and 
Intelligently what she has to give us. 

This saint of to-day was known, as 
saints are always known, by her beautiful 
humility. When her friends addressed 
her, as they sometimes did with perfect 
sincerity but under the masque of 
humor, as the saint, she always and with 
kindred touch of humor spoke of her- 
self as the sinner. Of the rare loveliness 
of her nature, the beautiful and winning 
sweetness of her life, she was as uncon- 
scious as is the flower of Its delicate 
coloring; and as the flower breathes Its 
fragrance Into the air without knowing 
29 



Fruits of the Spirit 

that virtue has gone from It, so did she 
exhale a rare and upHftIng Influence of 
which she took no note. In all the 
long and shining calendar of saints none 
was more simple, unaffected, and child- 
like in spirit than she; holiness clothed 
her Hke a garment, but she was as free 
from conventional pietism as the child 
who knows his father intimately and loves 
him with ^a perfect love Is free from 
conventional phrases of formal affection. 
Life was so deeply and wholly religious to 
her that she had long ceased to think of 
It as a form of faith, a kind of activity, a 
field of endeavor. This childlike uncon- 
sciousness made her the most delightful 
of companions, the gentlest of teachers, 
the most faithful of friends. She could 
speak of the highest things without 
affectation; she could touch the most 
sensitive places without giving pain; 
she could make the divlnest credible 
without the aid of text or argument. 
She was. Indeed, a beautiful version of 
the Gospel In the most human speech. 
30 



A Saint of To-Day 

Like all true saints, she was intensely 
and unaffectedly human. For more than 
seventy years she had seen life in many 
remote places, had known many kinds 
of men, had done many kinds of work 
with unfailing freshness of feeling and 
with the strength and joy of perfect 
health. Then came sickness, and for 
seven years she lay helpless in her room, 
watched over with tireless vigilance and 
cared for with beautiful devotion; for 
such as she evoke from others that which 
they give freely from their own natures. 
In that change from free activity to 
helpless invahdism there must have been 
a terrible spiritual struggle; and in those 
long days and longer nights there must 
have been hours of inexpressible weari- 
ness; but no repining ever came from 
her lips; in the time of most acute suf- 
fering there was no touch of querulous- 
ness. She always spoke of her suf- 
ferings, if she spoke at all, in an imper- 
sonal way; she was always well, though 
her frail body was often sorely afflicted. 
31 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Her spirit, securely housed in undisturbed 
and serene faith, was impregnable. 

So deep was her faith that it gave 
her a beautiful freedom in the world; 
she lived joyously in her Father's house. 
And because she was free she had one 
great resource which some saints have 
denied themselves — a delightful and 
never-failing humor. This great gift, so 
often misunderstood, is itself an evidence 
of immortality. For the soul of humor 
is the consciousness of the contrast 
between the greatness of man's destiny 
and the absurdity of some of his inter- 
ests and occupations. It is pre-eminently 
the resource of those who can play with 
the incongruities of life because they know 
its transcendent significance; of those who 
can give themselves the liberty of the 
house because they are at home in it. So 
there came to her a vivacity, an ease, a 
charm of disposition and of talk, which 
made her room a place of peace and joy 
and often of gayety. She was not afraid 
to be happy, and her happiness per- 
32 



A Saint of To-Day 

vaded the place in which she suffered. 
Among those who read these words 
few will recognize the portrait; if it 
were otherwise, even this slight sketch 
could not have been written. The 
record is made to remind the despond- 
ent, the skeptical, the scoffing, and all 
who bear heavy crosses, that in this age 
of immense practical activity, of vast 
enterprises, of absorbing pursuit of the 
things that perish in the using, of haste, 
tumult, and restlessness, holy men and 
women still walk the earth as of old, 
saintly lives still bear the fruit of peace 
and love in quiet places, and the highest 
virtues still have their eloquent wit- 
nesses. Eighty-four years this saint of 
to-day breathed the air of the modern 
world, shared in its work and spoke its 
language, and went out of life as stain- 
less as she entered it; leaving behind 
her a memory which has become part 
of the imperishable wealth of all who 
passed her way and felt the spell of her 
radiant spirit. 

33 



The Mask of the Years 

THE sunlight has marked the hours 
for centuries on old dials in Eng- 
lish gardens, but there remains no record 
of their number or their beginning. In 
the heart of the earth there are ancient 
memories which have been deciphered; 
and men have kept, for a part of their 
life in the world, a register of their 
thoughts and deeds. But no one knows 
when time began, nor does any one fore- 
see its ending. So accustomed are we 
to its divisions and sub-divisions that we 
forget that it has no real existence out- 
side our own minds. It is a universal 
convention, but it is only a convention; 
something agreed upon and accepted for 
convenience; an accommodation to our 
limited vision and knowledge. So long 
has this convention been established and 
so universal is its acceptance that we have 
fallen into the habit of setting it in anti- 
34 



The Mask of the Years 

thesis with eternity; forgetting that it is 
only a very imperfect attempt to bring 
eternity within the range of our expe- 
rience and to make it, if not comprehen- 
sible, at least usable. Time is one way 
of reckoning the bit of eternity which 
our earth or our race remembers. There 
is nothing outside ourselves which cor- 
responds to it; it is a convenient and 
necessary fiction; eternity is the only 
reality. 

The time-sense is of importance be- 
cause it helps us to give our lives order 
and to keep us in working relations with 
our fellows; but it is the sense of eternity 
which makes deep thinking and noble 
living possible. Time is a little section 
of the great whole which is eternity; it is 
a detail in a great plan; to live as if it 
were all of life, to see things as if their 
time-relations expressed their real signifi- 
cance, to value our opportunities and 
tasks and burdens as if they were related 
to the years which we number, is to put a 
part in place of the whole and to miss the 
35 



Fruits of the Spirit 

meaning and glory of living. It has been 
said of Dante that he saw life under the 
aspect of eternity. When he looked at 
the seed, the tree stood before him; when 
he saw the sowing, he saw in the same 
vision the harvesting; in every act he 
discerned a cause whose effect was pres- 
ent, in every deed he foresaw the fruitage 
in power or in misery. He did not look 
ahead; he simply looked into the heart of 
things; he saw things through the sense 
of eternity. The greatness and the ter- 
ror of " The Divine Comedy " lies in the 
fact that it destroys the fiction of time 
and makes us suddenly aware that on 
this very to-day, the hours of which are 
registered on dials in sunny gardens, we 
are in eternity. 

In so far as art is noble and significant 
it annihilates the sense of time and brings 
us face to face with the beauty and the 
terror of eternity. The Sistine Madonna 
sets the mother in the light of eternity, 
and all heads are uncovered and all voices 
are hushed in the sudden discernment of 
36 



The Mask of the Years 

the meaning of motherhood in that lan- 
guage of the spirit which is the speech 
of eternity, when all disguises are torn 
away and the divinity of true living is 
revealed. The " Last Judgment " fills 
us with awe, not because It is a picture of 
a great event to come in some distant age, 
but because it makes us aware that we 
are sifted, tried, and judged hour by hour, 
and that the great artist has dramatized 
in a moment of time the eternal process. 
There are portrait-painters who have 
such power of divination, of penetrating 
the mask of the countenance to the char- 
acter, that their canvases are revelations 
of the eternal elements in the nature of 
the man or woman behind the touches 
and moldings of time. Whenever the 
soul comes into view, the man is seen 
under the aspect of eternity. It is one 
of the highest services of art that it shows 
life under the aspects of eternity; the fic- 
tion of time dissolves under the search- 
ing glance of the great artist or thinker. 
Shakespeare's genius lies in the unique 
37 



Fruits of the Spirit 

power with which he gives us the feature 
of the time and the hidden soul which is 
eternal behind it; the graphic dramatic 
force with which he delineates the deed, 
the masterful insight with which he re- 
lates it to the man and his fortunes. 

In this double power the Bible is 
unique among the books of the world. 
Concrete, pictorial, historic, it flashes 
light at every turn on the ultimate re- 
sults and conditions; picturing with mar- 
velous vividness the sowing of the seed, 
it instantly discloses the harvest. In this 
lies its pervading, prophetic quality; its 
steady discernment of the things that are 
to come because at every stage it lays 
bare the hidden process which, in the eye 
of the prophet, is accomplished as joon 
as it is set in motion. So the Christ 
moves to his martyrdom with such cer- 
tainty that long before the star shines 
over Bethlehem the agony of the cross 
is announced. 

The years come out of the great silence 
in unbroken succession because we need 
38 



The Mask of the Years 

their divisions in our endeavor to realize, 
in daily experience, the continuity of 
eternity. They give us something to 
grasp and use; but they must not confuse 
or blind us to the truth that the life we 
now live is eternal, and that while we 
number our years and distinguish them 
one from another, we are already in 
eternity. To-morrow is already in 
to-day; the distant future is part of this 
swiftly departing present. What we 
think and do in this brief instant we are 
and shall be in the far-off cycles to which 
we move. Our deeds are not of the day; 
they are of eternity. Below all the 
shiftings and changes, the moods and 
emotions, the depressions and exaltations, 
something Indestructible Is shaping itself 
as surely as below the bareness and icy 
bondage of winter a vast life is organiz- 
ing Itself. 

Our sorrows are registered by the days, 

but If the root of submission and faith Is 

In them they are as certainly overpast as 

If already the shadows were gone and the 

39 



Fruits of the Spirit 

heavens were soft and gracious over our 
heads. So far as the righteous are able 
to look through the mask of the years, 
light is not only sown for them; it already 
floods the skies. So far as the high pur- 
pose is deep-rooted and loyally held, no- 
bility and strength and freedom are al- 
ready achieved. So far as love is pure, 
unselfish, and sacrificial, it is already safe 
against the ravages of death. Life is 
not yet at the flood, but it is ours as truly 
as if we were in full possession of its un- 
bounded resources; the perfect stature is 
yet afar off, but if the law of growth is 
working in us, it is already ours as surely 
as if we had completely attained. The 
sorrows which the years bring the years 
take away; they are of the time and the 
place, and we are not the slaves of time 
and place; but our joys, having their 
source in the soul, are indestructible. In 
the darkest night we know that the day is 
below the horizon; the shadow on the 
dial does not confuse us; we know that 
the sun Is on the way. In our deepest 
40 



The Mask of the Years 

griefs, if we look into our souls, the joy 
of eternal possession already stirs; it 
needs but the ripening of our faith and 
patience to bear its perfect flower. The 
life of love is not counted by the years; 
once born in the heart, it abides forever. 
Sown in the furrows of time, it blooms in 
those immortal fields where no shadows 
wait to hide the sun and no chill of death 
checks the eternal growth. 



41 



Love and Work 

IDEALISM as an interpretation of 
life, a vision of ultimate ends and 
conditions, has always won to itself the 
ardent, the poetic, and the high-minded 
— the great company of seekers after 
light and love in every generation, who 
rebel against the hardness and injustice 
of the world, hate its noise and brutality, 
its fierce competitions and its stolid indif- 
ference to the defeated. Even in the 
presence of the great purpose which runs 
through the visible order of things and 
the society in which men have arranged 
themselves, and which has come to light, 
as one of the most spiritual men of the 
day has said, just in time to save some 
of the best men and women from despair, 
it is hard for the sensitive and aspiring 
and tender-hearted to bear the sorrows 
of the world and to sit with a cheerful 
spirit while so many losses ravage the 
42 



Love and Work 

homes that are dear to them and de- 
spoil the best fortunes of men. There 
are hosts of men and women who go 
through life with a noble discontent in 
their hearts, a sense of loneliness and 
isolation in their souls; they are home- 
sick for a world in which men help 
instead of smite, bind up instead of 
wound, are quick to recognize the good 
instead of eager to find the evil, stand 
ready in all crises to rebuild the fallen, 
are patient of spirit with the weak, love 
the sinner while they loathe the sin, are 
kindly in speech because kindly in 
thought, are indifferent to external con- 
ditions because conditions are the hap- 
penings of life while the soul is its great 
and enduring reality, are bound together 
in a vast conspiracy to cheer, to aid, to 
give heart and hope, to make the high- 
ways of life bloom with spontaneous 
kindnesses, and to make the lonely world 
a warm, hospitable, many-windowed 
home for all who pass this way on the 
journey of life. 

43 



Fruits of the Spirit 

If the truth were told, what confes- 
sions of sohtude, of heartache, of lone- 
Hness of spirit, would come like a flood 
from those whom men count happy 
because they are intrenched against the 
blows of disaster by all manner of mate- 
rial possession ! " The heart knoweth 
his own bitterness " Is one of the truest 
and saddest of all the summlngs up of 
experience In the Book of Proverbs; and 
where there is no bitterness there is 
always loneliness. In whatever circum- 
stances men are born In this world, they 
are all born In exile; and in exile pal- 
aces are often as prison-like as hovels. 

This is the penalty of immortality; 
the price we pay for the birthright of 
the divine In us. To have the power of 
creating heaven in the imagination is to 
bare one's heart to the coldness and 
hardness of the world; to see Paradise 
at a distance is to make the desert in 
which we are traveling more barren and 
lonely. As one who loves the sweetness 
of the open meadow, the solitude of 
44 



Love and Work 

woods, and the cool musing of running 
brooks finds the noise and odor and 
crowding of the city almost intolerable, 
so those who carry a vision of heaven In 
their souls find the unkindness, the tu- 
mult, and the hardness of this present 
world almost unbearable. They have 
often fled from It and sought refuge In 
isolation; they have made homes for 
themselves in the vast quiet of the Nile 
valley, they have built monasteries on 
almost Inaccessible heights, they have 
buried themselves out of the sight and 
sound of the world in all manner of 
lonely refuges. But wherever they have 
gone they have carried the passionate 
human heart with them, and even when 
they have found the peace which some- 
times flows out of the heart of silence, 
they have never found the perfect society, 
the cloudless day of joy, the redeemed 
world. 

If Idealism were at bottom an explana- 
tion of life as It reveals Itself within the 
limits of time, It would often seem the 
45 



Fruits of the Spirit 

idlest of dreams, the most untenable of 
philosophies; but it Is a solution of the 
great problem only at the end of a 
world-wide and an almost illimitable 
process of growth and unfolding; it Is 
the vision of an ultimate perfection, not 
a statement of present conditions; It is, 
at the heart, a glimpse into the great 
mystery of education which makes this 
life not only bearable but marvelously 
spiritual and hope-Inspiring. 

The Idealism which lies within every 
man's reach and In every man's need Is 
surrender to the urgent and passionate 
desire to give his own spirit the shape 
and quality of the divine spirit, and to 
create in himself those traits and that 
attitude which he yearns to find wrought 
Into the fiber of society; to be In his 
own soul that which he wishes all men 
were. Conditions, whether easy or dif- 
ficult, are secondary; the eternal element 
of peace and happiness lies in every 
man's soul, beyond the reach of acci- 
dent. They who seek heaven must take 
46 



Love and Work 

refuge in their own spirits, not in some 
solitary place at a distance; and they 
must find it, not in more congenial cir- 
cumstances, but in a freer and nobler 
putting forth of the best in themselves. 
The true Idealist is not a dreamer in a 
world of realities which make his dream 
incredible, nor is he a refugee escaping 
from conditions which he cannot bear 
to a more comfortable place; he is a 
man who is patiently and often pain- 
fully shaping his life in harmony with 
an inward purpose; who is mastering 
crude materials that he may make the 
vision in whose light he lives shine 
before the eyes of men whose sight is 
less clear than his; who is doing com- 
monplace things in a spirit which gives 
them the beauty of a high purpose, as 
the great architect redeems the mean- 
ness of the hidden stone by the splendor 
of the structure in which it finds its 
place. 

Men are made happy, not by the 
things which surround them nor by the 
47 



Fruits of the Spirit 

things which they take to themselves, 
but by the noble putting forth of the 
soul in love and work; the two great 
activities which are never divorced in 
the harmonious and balanced life, the 
two languages in which every true Ideal- 
ist makes confession of his faith and 
gives evidence of its reality. For love 
is the ultimate expression of faith, and 
without works faith is a vain shadow of 
reality. 



48 



A Text from Luther 

LUTHER, who at his best had com- 
mand of that kind of speech which 
combines clearness of statement, beauty 
of imagination, and warmth of heart, 
whose words, as Carlyle has said, were 
" half battles," has left an exhortation to 
fraternal love and sacrifice which is a 
noble sermon compacted into a para- 
graph: "Every Christian should be 
unto his fellow-man a willing servant, 
willing to help and aid his neighbor, even 
as God acts towards us through Christ. 
Thus all of God's gifts must flow from 
one into the other and be common to 
all, flowing from Christ to us, from us 
to our neighbor, who stands in need 
thereof." These words might be taken 
as a description of the fundamental ofiice 
of the Christian Church, which is not 
only to bear testimony to the Christ who 
lived and died nineteen hundred years 
49 



Fruits of the Spirit 

ago, but to share with all men that truth 
which he communicated, to divide with 
all men the love of which his life was 
the supreme expression, and to include 
all men in the universal care of God. 

For the individual man or woman who 
Is trying to repeat the life of Christ these 
words have the most searching signifi- 
cance. Over the portal of every day's 
life they ought to be written; for unless 
the truth which they contain is practiced, 
there is no real religion. The final evi- 
dence of religion is always the fruit it 
bears. No conformity to creed, no rigid- 
ity of observation of ritual, no devotion 
to any church as an organization, no 
ritualistic act or service, can be the final 
test of the love of Christ in a man's 
heart. The final test of the presence of 
that love is always the disposition to 
treat others as Christ treats us, to do 
unto others as Christ has done unto us, 
and to illustrate in our relations with 
others the charity, kindness, and sacri- 
ficial spirit which gave the life of Christ 
50 



A Text from Luther 

and his death their beautiful and supreme 
significance. In the clamor of contend- 
ing interpretations of the Christian life, 
in the tumult of antagonistic claims of au- 
thority from this church or from that, 
in all the uncertainty of thought, or prac- 
tice, or of organization which prevails 
throughout the world to-day, the spirit 
of Christ manifested in our relations 
with our fellows is the definite and fixed 
thing which any man or woman may 
learn and which every man and woman 
ought to practice. Better a thousand 
times heterodoxy of opinion than heter- 
odoxy of spirit; better a thousand times 
the imperfect ritual than the selfish heart. 
It is best to think right and to worship 
God wisely and nobly; but if the Bible 
teaches anything definitely, it teaches the 
great fundamental fact that what the In- 
finite cares for supremely is not correct- 
ness of opinion or of ritual, but the right 
spirit, not only towards man, but to- 
wards every creature He has made. 
This is the test to which the Old Testa- 
51 



Fruits of the Spirit 

ment, through its great teachers, was con- 
stantly bringing the Jewish people; and 
it is one of the awful tragedies of the 
race that those who were highest in the 
Church, most orthodox in opinion, most 
scrupulous in ritual, failed most com- 
pletely to interpret and practice the spirit 
of Christ. No man is saved by his or- 
thodoxy, but any man may be saved by 
his life; no man is saved by his church- 
manship, but any man may be saved by 
his character. 

Men are not likely to undervalue the 
importance of correct opinion and proper 
ritual, but they have shown a constant 
tendency to undervalue and obscure the 
supreme importance of the right relations 
toward their fellows; and Luther's words, 
spoken in the sixteenth century, are as 
applicable to the twentieth century as If 
they had been written by a contemporary 
prophet or teacher. In the exact degree 
in which God's gifts in our keeping are 
made common to all, in which the spirit 
of Christ received by us is illustrated In 
52 



A Text from Luther 

our lives, In which the love of God, 
accepted by us, is not only passed on, but 
interpreted by our own attitude toward 
others In thought, word, and deed, have 
we a right to consider ourselves follow- 
ers of Christ. 



53 



The Escape from Fear 

THE story of man in this world Is the 
story of getting away from fear. 
Fear was the universal shadow that 
rested over the fore-fathers of the race. 
They were afraid of everything, and they 
had reason to be, because everything 
seemed hostile to them. Even now, after 
thousands of years of observation, ex- 
perience, discovery, and obedience, there 
are moments when nature seem^ to be the 
enemy of man In spite of the fact that 
science has taught us that nature is our 
beneficent and wonderful friend of whose 
services the achievements of the magi- 
cians were faint symbols. The earliest 
men were surrounded by perils which 
must have sunk deep into their conscious- 
ness and made life one prolonged and 
painful watchfulness. The sun smote 
them with fire; the winter froze them 
with ice; the great storms, which they 
54 



The Escape from Fear 

could not predict and against which they 
could not provide, destroyed them; wild 
beasts, poisonous serpents and venomous 
Insects devoured or poisoned them; tem- 
pests swept their fragile homes out of 
existence; the lightning blasted them; dis- 
ease came out of the ground; and death 
awaited them at every turn. 

And when, In the crude beginnings of 
thought, they felt the presence of a per- 
sonal power behind all these forces, that 
power was malignant and threatening. 
The fear of God with early men was a 
cowering and crushing fear. God was 
pursuing them; their safety lay in escap- 
ing his attention. He was angry with 
them; they placated him. He was jeal- 
ous of them; they concealed their good 
fortune. He was envious of them; they 
hardly dared to be happy. A man's life 
was a long struggle to protect himself 
from a God who beset him behind and 
before, not to protect, but to blight and 
destroy. 

And to the first men their fellow-men 
55 



Fruits of the Spirit 

were as dangerous as nature and God. 
The stranger was necessarily an enemy; 
to meet him safely one must always be 
ready with a weapon or with a blow. All 
differences of race, of country, of lan- 
guage, were the symbols of an aliena- 
tion full of hatred and antagonism. Be- 
fore the first Christmas fear was a uni- 
versal emotion, and such happiness and 
peace as man got out of life he snatched 
with a fearful joy of escaping the re- 
lentless bitterness of nature, the jeal- 
ousies of the gods, and the antagonism 
and hatred of his fellows. When the 
shepherds saw the angels above their 
flocks, their first feeling was not one of 
exaltation and joy, but of fear; and the 
first words the angels said were spoken 
to calm those fears. Before the great 
and beautiful hymn which heaven has 
sung on earth, '* Peace and good will to- 
wards men," could be heard the angels 
had to say, ** Fear not! " 

The fear of God in the old blasting 
sense of the word ended when Christ 
56 



The Escape from Fear 

came to cast out fear and to write in its 
place another word, *' Love." He came 
to teach men that even the things that 
seemed unfriendly were expressions of 
the divine friendship, and the disasters, 
sorrows, and hardships of life had be- 
hind them the intelligence of an infinite 
love. Ever since that message came 
men have been slowly casting out fear. 
Life long ago ceased to mean for them 
an attempt to elude the anger of God 
and has become an opportunity; not a 
thing to run away from, but to run into, 
so to speak; for, as Phillips Brooks once 
said, " The way to escape from God is 
to escape into him;" that is to say, to 
accept the order of life as it is revealed 
in our experience as a discipline of love 
and not of anger. Fear makes men 
cowards, and the coward is as brutal in 
his panic as the savage. Fear turns civ- 
ilized men into savages, and humanity 
is never so base as when it is seeking in 
a great crisis to protect itself instead of 
seeking to protect others. For the spirit 
57 



Fruits of the Spirit 

of Christ Is the spirit of a love which 
casteth out fear, not only because it 
teaches that the order of life is divinely 
fashioned, but because, by substituting 
the love of others for the love of self, 
it makes us Indifferent to personal danger. 

There Is no place In the world for fear 
if one's heart is set to deal justly, to 
walk humbly, to help gratefully, and to 
forget one's self. The greater the 
danger, the greater the need for that 
valiant spirit which enables a man to 
walk quietly down to his own death be- 
cause he is concerned not for himself but 
for others. 

The root of love is faith In the good- 
ness of God, and faith Is to be used, not 
when the skies are cloudless, but when 
they are black; not when there Is light 
on all the paths, but when darkness cov- 
ers the whole face of the earth and the 
paths are hidden in a vast confusion. 



58 



Praying and Waiting 

IT is easy to pray for things but hard 
to wait for them; and we often rush 
to the conclusion that because prayers 
are not answered in a moment they are 
not answered at all. A little thought 
would end this kind of skepticism and 
give us patience to wait on the Lord 
without repining or sinking of heart. 
Great blessings sometimes come sud- 
denly, but none before they have been 
prepared for by some kind of spiritual 
training; great orators sometimes sud- 
denly come to light in apparently com- 
monplace careers, but not unless there 
have been rich possibilities hidden be- 
neath the routine of daily work. No 
man, in any great crisis, shows a gift for 
speech or action of heroism unless the 
germs of those things were already in 
him. Great moments do not put great 
qualities into the souls of men; they sim- 
ply reveal what is already there. 
59 



Fruits of the Spirit 

The fruits of character cannot be real- 
ized until the seeds of nobility have had 
time to grow; and education of some 
kind must precede all forms of sustained 
strength. Weak men have often, by 
prayer, been made strong in critical 
moments, but they acquire the habit of 
strength only by exercise. The weak 
arm does not become muscular by taking 
thought, but by taking exercise; the 
Irritable temper Is not made sweet by a 
sudden act of will, but by patient repres- 
sion of an unhappy tendency; the man 
of unclean mind is not cleansed because 
he resolves to be white, but because he 
forms the habit of purity. We are con- 
tinually asking God to give us the fruits 
of character without the discipline of 
training, not realizing that we are asking 
him to do for us the work that alone 
would strengthen our muscles and give 
us the power we crave. We ask to be 
fed by a miracle instead of tilling the 
ground, sowing the seed, and reaping 
the harvest with our own hands, and so 
60 



Praying and Waiting 

getting strength from the soil. He Is 
ready to help us In any time of need, 
but moral help must be secured by 
moral exertion; we must not ask God ta 
pauperize us. Men ought to pray every 
day for sweetness of temper, since the 
lack of it blights countless homes and 
neutralizes many noble qualities; but 
they ought to remember that sweetness 
Is born out of the subjection of strength, 
the mastery of temper, the control of the 
tones of voice, and that to gain the 
blessed gift one must wait on the Lord, 
and let education give prayer its ultimate 
effectiveness. 



6i 



The Bugle Call 

YEARS ago, in a foreign city, long 
after midnight, a bugle rang out 
clear and penetrating in the -darkness that 
comes before dawn. It pierced the deep- 
est recesses of sleep and sounded the 
great note of action and adventure. To 
what duty it summoned and whither it led 
they only knew to whom it was a com- 
mand; but a great company of those 
who came out of their dreams to hear it 
were shaken by its imperative call, and 
must remember it as an impersonal sym- 
bol of that divine voice which from time 
to time rings in the innermost courts of a 
man's soul with the music of great deeds 
on noble fields. Hosts of men are para- 
lyzed because they hear no voices save 
those that weaken and betray them — the 
voices of their weariness, indecision, 
skepticism, weakness. They sleep on 
their arms as If no fight were to be won, 
no soul to be saved from its baser 
6z 



The Bugle Call 

passions, Its cowardly moods. If they 
rouse themselves, it is to take account of 
their discomfort; to note that the night 
is dark, the air cold, the ground hard. 
They lie bound hand and foot in a 
stupor of uncertainty and discourage- 
ment. They complain of their hard- 
ships, repine at their inaction, waste their 
courage and strength in hollow excuses 
and evasions. So intent are they on their 
deprivations that they forget the cause 
which they set out to serve and curse 
the leaders whom they no longer follow. 
Again and again -the bugle rings out on 
the night, but they sleep on and take 
their rest even while the Master is be- 
trayed into the hands of his enemies. 

They drug themselves with the nar- 
cotics of fatalism, of the irresistible 
power of circumstances, of the over- 
whelming force of the obstacles which 
surround them; they lull themselves Into 
sleep with a thousand excuses and eva- 
sions. If they had been equipped with 
different arms, been under another com- 
63 



Fruits of the Spirit 

mand, had another sort of drill, been 
better cared for, received a larger meas- 
ure of strength, they would have done 
such heroic things and won victories on 
such glorious fields ! And while they He 
in a stupor of weakness the bugles ring 
and a thousand men about them spring 
to arms and march singing to the good 
fortune of those dangers In which men 
rise to sublime heights of self-forgetful 
courage. The chance which Is the di- 
vine opportunity of life comes to them 
all, and they make that great refusal 
which defeats the very ends for which 
they were made and leaves them laggards 
and deserters; while their fellows, who 
carry the same weapons, are chilled by 
the same air, and endure the same hard- 
ness, arise and are gone before the dawn. 
Among the pitiful tragedies of life there 
is none more pitiful than that which over- 
takes the man who is more Intent on his 
discomforts and the things which are de- 
nied him than on his opportunities of 
work and self-denial and service. 

64 



The Bugle Call 

Savonarola was one of those whose 
career Is beset with every sort of diffi- 
culty, whose path is hard and solitary, 
who is alone in a world of enemies. He 
might have cried out to his Leader that 
the task laid upon him was too great 
for his strength, that the fight was against 
overwhelming odds, that if he was to 
win he ought to have had a thousand 
things which were denied him. But he 
thought not of his weakness but of the 
strength of his cause, not of his danger 
but of the greatness of the service to 
which he was called, not of his hardships 
but of his glorious chance to live and 
die fighting the good fight of faith. To 
him, as to all men, came the doubts, the 
questionings, the weariness, the sense 
of great weakness; and there is a little 
poem of his in which he tells us how he 
met them: 

" Down by the road of evil 
Wanders my spirit; 
If it receive not succor, 
It will die shortly. 

65 



Fruits of the Spirit 

The Devil he deceives it 

With his false reasoning; 
The senses they promise it 

Every possible pleasure; 
The world ever invites it 

To indulge itself in iniquity: 
My spirit thus tempted, 

Who now will help it ? — 

Help thyself, good-for-nothing, 

With the gift that God gives thee; 

Thou hast full power 

To make thyself worthy. 
• •••••• 

Thou canst not be conquered 

Save thou art willing. 
Stronger is grace 

Than every adversity." 

There are times when a man must say 
to his own spirit, '' Up, thou sluggard, 
and away; the bugle calls; the day of 
battle dawns." Let no man be de- 
ceived; the fortunes of his soul are in his 
own hands. He may beguile himself for 
a time with the dream of fatalism, but 
even while he dreams he knows in his 
heart that he is deceiving himself. He 
66 



The Bugle Call 

may talk of his limitations, his difficulties, 
his conditions, his temperament; but in 
his heart he knows that these are mere 
subterfuges; that he has bound himself 
with imaginary fetters, and that if he 
will arise and stand erect these illusive 
bonds will fall from him. He may not 
be able to do the work of some other man, 
but he can do his own work, and that is 
all that is required. Every man has the 
strength to do his duty if he chooses to 
put it forth, to be a man and not a dumb, 
driven creature, the mere shape of a man 
driven like a cloud of dust across the 
field of life by the wind of destiny. He 
may go to suffering, hardness, and death, 
as Savonarola did; but these things are 
mere Incidents; the great thing is that 
he shall strive and not sleep. The prodi- 
gal slept long, but he heard the call at 
last, awoke, and became a man once 
more when he turned from the beasts 
and said, " I will go to my father." 



67 



The Upper Room 

WHEN the first day of unleavened 
bread came, Jesus sent Peter and 
John Into the city, and told them that 
they would meet a man whom they were 
to follow and who would show them a 
room in which the passover could be 
eaten. " He will show you a large upper 
room furnished and prepared; there make 
ready for us. . . . When the hour was 
come, he sat down, and the twelve 
apostles with him." No scene In his- 
tory is more simple In Its setting, none 
more memorable. It has been described 
with beautiful and reverent eloquence; 
it has been painted with supreme skill by 
a master of the art; it has been rehearsed 
times without number in many different 
forms, according to the most diverse rit- 
uals; it has been observed as a simple 
breaking of bread and pouring of wine, 
and it has been celebrated at blazing 
68 



The Upper Room 

altars by richly vested priests; but its 
innermost significance can never be en- 
tirely expressed in any worship nor form- 
ulated in any creed. The beauty and 
wonder of it lie on the further side of 
any kind of language which men have 
fashioned to give ease to their souls. 

But one great fact stands out in this 
wonderful scene: the upper room was 
the place of meeting between the Christ 
and his Apostles ! It will remain for- 
ever the symbol of the communion be- 
tween God and man; the quiet place, hid- 
den from the world, where man meets 
God and Is fed by the bread of life; that 
food by which the soul lives, bestowed 
only by the hand of God. The world is 
full of men and women who have eaten 
the fruit of every tree except the tree of 
life, who partake of everything that gives 
vigor to the body, but never sit at the 
invisible table where that bread is spread 
which makes one stronger than death. 
Among all the manifold ironies of life 
there is none so terrible as the well-nour- 
69 



Fruits of the Spirit 

ished body and the starving soul. As 
there are beauitful faces in which no 
spirit irradiates the mask of bones and 
flesh, so there are prosperous men and 
women whose lot awakens the envy of 
their fellows whose outward success is 
without spiritual dignity or meaning. 
Men can exist without the words that 
proceed from the mouth of God, but they 
cannot live without them. They build 
themselves palaces and lay the skill of 
the world under contribution to make 
them stately without and luxurious within, 
but they provide no upper room. They 
open their doors wide and entertain their 
friends lavishly, but there is no place for 
God under the roof. There are magnifi- 
cent rooms where guests are welcomed 
with royal splendor, there are great gal- 
leries into which are gathered the treas- 
ures of many ages and countries but there 
Is no upper room. 

The activities and rewards of the time 
are so engrossing that many high-minded 
and pure-hearted people find no time for 
70 



The Upper Room 

meditation and communion in the upper 
room. Many of them are so bent on 
helping their fellows that they forget 
whence cometh their help; they are so 
eager to share the sorrows of their fel- 
lows that they forget Him who bore the 
cross up the steep way to Calvary; they 
are so drained by the duties they take up 
that they lose the inspiration which makes 
duty the channel through which love 
pours itself out; they listen with such 
passionate attention to the cries for help 
that come from the world around them 
that they no longer hear the still, small 
voice of the Father of all men. In the 
house of the generous and self-sacrificing, 
as in the houses of the selfish and hard- 
hearted, there is no upper room. 

And yet no man can live without God ! 
It is true, he comes in a thousand forms 
and speaks many languages; but it is also 
true that men must make ready the room 
in which they can meet him face to face. 
Where there is no upper room, the 
house, however nobly appointed and dedi- 
71 



Fruits of the Spirit 

cated, may remain a place of courage and 
arduous endeavor, but It ceases to be a 
place of contagious hope, of that vision 
which enables men to look at the sorrows 
of the arid lives without losing heart In 
the Infinite love. For those who give 
themselves to works of mercy and stand 
ready to help In the highways, no less 
than for those who feed their bodies and 
starve their souls, the upper room Is not 
only a place of refuge, It Is a necessity of 
the higher nature ; and the more exacting 
the work becomes, and the greater Its 
Interest and reward, the more pressing Is 
the need of the upper room where the 
tumult of the world dies into silence and 
the ambitions of the world shrink into the 
rewards of a passing hour, and man talks 
with his God. 






72 



The Price of Immortality 

SHAKESPEARE gives Polonius a 
prominent place in the early part of 
" Hamlet," and then allows him to be ig- 
nominiously mistaken for a rat and killed. 
This end was due to Polonius; but Shake- 
speare must have found great satisfaction 
in bringing it about. For Polonius was 
essentially a coward and an atheist. He 
was always warning people to beware of 
life; he proposed to put everybody In a 
chain armor of selfish caution. The sub- 
stance of his advice to his son and to all 
the others to whom he talked was : " Get 
money; avoid friends; beware of life! " 
George Macdonald said that Polonius 
would have been right if the devil had 
been God. But in a universe In which 
the devil Is the devil and God Is God Po- 
lonius was tragically wrong. His atti- 
tude made It Impossible for him to be- 
lieve anything, and he was therefore In- 
capable of understanding anything. 
73 



Fruits of the Spirit 

The only man who greatly succeeds is 
the man who believes. The unbelieving 
man tries to conduct the business of life 
alone; he refuses to enter into partner- 
ship with the great force behind life. He 
suspects that force, fears it, and tries to 
protect himself from it. He makes, 
therefore, the smallest possible invest- 
ment of his affections, his convictions, his 
energy. Instead of taking possession of 
the great House of Life and living in it 
like an heir to whom it has come by hon- 
orable inheritance, he bolts the doors and 
bars the windows, locks his treasures in 
the innermost room, watches for thieves, 
and dreads earthquakes and tempests. 
He never takes the privileges of an heir 
of the world or of a son of God. No 
man can really make a success in the su- 
preme business of living unless he goes 
into partnership with the force behind 
life, invests everybody that he is and has, 
and commits himself gladly and boldly 
to that force which some people call 
righteousness and others call God. 
74 



The Price of Immortality 

The phrase '' growing up with a com- 
munity," which is often heard in this 
country, is significant of one great element 
of success. Those men who foresee the 
growth of a locaHty, identify themselves 
with it, and make investment in it are 
lifted often on a rising tide of prosperity 
to great wealth. They are not specula- 
tors; for the speculator is a gambler. 
They are far-sighted men, with the 
prophetic instinct; they have faith enough 
to commit themselves to the larger for- 
tunes of a community; and so they found 
great fortunes on insight, observation, 
and faith. 

Browning was the prophet of those 
who take God at his word; who believe 
that the invisible forces behind life are 
friendly and bear one forward. Those 
who yield to these forces are carried to 
great prosperities of soul. Men and 
women of the Polonius type of mind 
never make great ventures; they never 
put their talents out at interest, but bury 
them in a napkin^ In the great House 



Fruits of the Spirit 

of Life they lie awake at night because 
they think they hear burglars or smell 
smoke. They never hoist sail and put 
boldly out to sea; they keep within sight 
of the shore. But the sea captain fears 
no storm, however violent, If he has 
plenty of sea room; the wrecks line the 
shore. Of course life Is full of danger; 
and many things may happen to bring 
pain and sorrow to those who are bold 
because they believe profoundly in the 
power behind hfe. But the man who 
greatly loses Is a nobler man than he who 
ignomlnlously succeeds. As a rule, the 
bold men who act on their faith make the 
great achievements; but even when they 
fall to command eternal success they gain 
nobility of soul. " He makes noble ship- 
wreck who is lost In seeking worlds." 

If the devil were God, caution would 
be a supreme duty; but because God Is 
God the supreme duty Is courage. Op- 
portunity is never separated from danger, 
and love always evokes the possibility of 
sorrow; but he would be a dull man who 
76 



The Price of Immortality 

would avoid adventure because peril Is 
bound up with it; and he would miss the 
whole beauty and meaning of life who 
would never permit himself to make a 
great venture of his affection because 
death may go with love. It is the mor- 
tal part that fears, it is the immortal part 
that dares; and the great trials are the 
price we pay for our immortality. If, 
to-day, Dante, far on In the paradise of 
which he dreamed cares for the fame 
which shines like a light over the whole 
world, he does not count those weary 
years of exile from Florence too great a 
price to have paid. Lincoln, looking 
down on a reunited family bound to- 
gether for the first time in a household of 
love, does not feel that his martyrdom 
was too great a price to have paid for 
such a result. The great things are al- 
ways to be greatly paid for. An Immor- 
tal spirit cannot be put Into a mortal body 
to live a mortal life without exposure 
to the changes, sorrows, and shadows of 
death which are a part of mortality. But 
77 



Fruits of the Spirit 

the brave man does not shrink from the 
toll and danger to which his very great- 
ness calls him in some noble task, and the 
Immortal spirit ought to be willing to 
face, to pay the price of. Its own immor- 
tality. 

The choice between following the mor- 
tal or the Immortal nature is laid upon 
us all. Happy are those who dare to be- 
lieve In God and to act, not as if Immor- 
tality were coming to them, but as if it 
were already theirs. 



78 



Light in the Darkness 

MY faith holds, but I cannot see 
my way," writes a man who Is 
trying to live In the spirit of Christ. 
The experience Is neither uncommon nor 
unhappy; for a secure anchorage of the 
soul Is the main thing In life. To see 
one's way has a great deal to do with 
happiness, but nothing to do with safety; 
to be able to follow the path step by step 
through fog and storm brings one to the 
end of the journey as certainly as to 
follow It In the sunshine. Some men see 
farther than others, but no man sees the 
whole course from start to finish; the 
greatness of the way makes that Impos- 
sible. The essential thing In the life of 
faith is not sight, but faith; in faith lies 
the discipline of the spirit, the firm and 
final setting of the will, the deep spiritual 
education that is born of patience, of 
waiting in hope, of the slow strengthen- 
ing of the habit of trust. 
79 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Clearness of vision, the constant sense 
of divine guidance, the joy of cloudless 
faith, are the possession of few men and 
women; for this radiancy of belief is a 
kind of religious genius, and genius is the 
possession of a little group out of count- 
less millions. They are many who, in 
lesser degree, walk in the light; some be- 
cause they are buoyant by temperament, 
some because the experiences that drive 
the spirit back on itself pass them by; a 
few because prosperity shields them from 
the knowledge of the tragic facts of life, 
from the shock of contact with the misery 
of the world. But these exceptionally 
comfortable men and women are counted 
fortunate only by those who do not 
see the tremendous significance of life. 
Prosperity is not a matter of easy condi- 
tions, but of large opportunity; to live in 
a palace, shut away from sorrow and 
care, is one of the supreme misfortunes 
of a life that is planned, not for ease, but 
for education; and the unluckiest boy in 
the world is the boy who is allowed to 
80 



Light in the Darkness 

play during the years when he ought to 
be at school. 

The faith that holds one securely when 
the mists cover the earth or the storms 
sweep over it is a matter, not of tempera- 
ment or fortunate conditions, but of deep 
and enduring conviction. The gates of 
hell, which are sometimes opened on a 
man and let loose a stormy mob of temp- 
tations or doubts, cannot prevail against 
it; and he who possesses it is impreg- 
nably intrenched against their attacks. 
He is never caught unawares or in am- 
bush; for his strength does not lie in his 
moods or his clearness of vision; it lies 
in himself. If he is plunged in the thick 
darkness of that depression in which men 
of weaker faith throw down their arms 
in despair, he stands steadfast and im- 
movable; it is not his to choose the light 
or the darkness; his duty is to stand res- 
olutely where he is placed, and there he 
holds his post like a soldier. If doubts 
gather thick around him and shut all the 
doors of hope, he waits, hopeless for 
8i 



Fruits of the Spirit 

the moment, but incorruptlbly loyal to 
his Master. It was in this temper that 
Childe Roland passed unfaltering through 
the horror of desolation, the slung horn 
at his lips, until he came to the dark 
tower, undaunted by visible and Invisible 
terrors, never for a moment in danger 
of any power outside himself. 

It Is in such darkness that the soul 
grows strong and faith justifies itself by 
the Inward strength that Increases un- 
awares In the man and makes great deeds 
easy; and great deeds In turn breed great 
natures and open the paths to those ulti- 
mate heights whence a world stretches in 
unbroken sunshine and the heavens are 
cloudless from horizon to horizon. To 
a few men the pilgrimage of life leads 
through unbroken light; to most men the 
light Is Intermittent and there are long 
leagues of journeying through bleak and 
shadowy countries; but that man is happy 
whose course takes him where steadfast- 
ness waits on courage and light comes 
not as a gift, but as an achievement. 
82 



Light in the Darkness 

There Is a peace that comes to him 
whose fight has been lonely and at times 
without hope of victory that gets its depth 
and sweetness from the fierceness of the 
struggle through which It Is won ; there Is 
a purity that Is the cleansing of fire; there 
Is a final certainty that Is victory snatched 
from a thousand doubts. The very 
throne of God Is set round with clouds 
and darkness, and the last venture of 
faith across the river of death is not 
made on a massive highway over the 
flood, but on stepping-stones receding In 
mist as faith passes calmly Into the dark- 
ness that comes before the day breaks 
and the night Is gone forever. 



83 



Stirring the Will 

THE familiar prayer In the Episco- 
pal Prayer-Book for the Sunday 
before Advent, " Stir up, we beseech 
thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful 
people; that they, plenteously bringing 
forth the fruit of good works, may by 
thee be plenteously rewarded; through 
Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen," goes to 
the very heart of the religious life; for 
the root of that life is not in the emo- 
tions, nor in the intellectual convictions, 
but in the will. This prayer, recited for 
many generations, has given its name to 
the day on which It is used, and *' StIr-up 
Sunday " is a phrase which conveys a 
challenge. 

Most men, when they feel deeply, give 
their emotions some form of expression; 
but expression is largely a matter of tem- 
perament. It is not a test of religious 
experience, nor is it, as it has sometimes 
been thought to be, the conclusive evi- 
84 



Stirring the Will 

dence of a changed nature. It is often 
the accompaniment of the change, but it 
is not the change itself. For this reason 
the dramatic and spectacular repentance 
of the criminal or the man of evil life is 
always looked upon with more or less 
suspicion. There is a sound instinct in 
the demand that a great sinner shall 
prove the reality of his repentance by his 
full and sincere recognition of the enor- 
mity of his offense; and when a man feels 
profoundly rather than dramatically the 
enormity of his sin, he is likely to flee 
from the public gaze and to seek in silence 
and solitude a place of penitence. The 
great sinner who takes the newspapers 
into his confidence when he makes an 
" about-face " is often sincere: but he is 
rarely a man of deep feeling or of a 
clear-cut conscience. The transition from 
a life of moral anarchy to one of submis- 
sion to the Divine Will is sometimes dra- 
matic in its suddenness, but it is rarely 
used as dramatic material by a man of 
deep experience and sincerity. 
85 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Many people are troubled because the 

life of faith does not lie before their feet f 

defined by sunshine; others doubt the { 

reality of their surrender to the Divine i 

Will because their emotions are not | 

touched and life does not become in- j 

stantly " one grand sweet song." This ' 

means generally that emotion is not the i 

natural expression of their temperament, f 

Religion is not a reality in a man's life i 

until it takes hold of his will; and a man ! 

becomes a Christian, not when he says, | 

" I feel " or " I believe," but when he } 

says " I will."; For it is only as a man 1 

wills to make his belief a part of his life | 

that he passes out of the region of in- * 

tellectual assent into the region of vital | 

religion. jl 

\ He who Is doing the will of God per- |' 

sistently in the face of uncertainty and, : 

for long periods, without joy, is the kind ,; 

of Christian of which this world stands l\ 
in sore need. He will never betray his 

trust, nor faint by the way, nor lose him- j 

self in the mists and fogs of changing '| 

86 : 



Stirring the Will 

opinion. He has the virtue of a soldier 
— he obeys orders. It Is never a ques- 
tion with him whether orders are agree- 
able or not; whether he is getting the 
recognition he deserves; whether he Is 
passed over and other men are promoted. 
It Is only a question of his understand- 
ing his orders and obeying them. 

In these agitated and critical times 
Christians may well pray for the descent 
of the Spirit on all the churches, and for 
the coming of one of those great waves 
of devout feeling which sometimes pass 
through society. But the emphasis of its 
prayer ought to be on the words, " Stir 
up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of 
thy faithful people." 



87 



Life, Growth, and Heaven 

WHEN people thought of the Hfe 
of man as the expression of a di- 
vine purpose mysteriously frustrated, and 
of the earth as a great ship which had 
drifted onto the rocks and from which a 
few fortunate souls were saved by super- 
natural lifeboats, Heaven was a harbor 
for those who survived the great dis- 
aster. The supreme effort was to save 
one's self In a lost world; and to land in 
safety was to be in a state of bliss — a 
fixed condition of perpetual thanksgiving 
for rescue. 

There were always those to whom a 
vision of the divine nature brought a di- 
vine thought of Heaven, and for whom, 
behind the most literal and rigid concep- 
tion, there was a glory like a golden 
sunset behind a sharply defined land- 
scape. In the ordered world of Dante, 
the static world of the Middle Ages, 
Heaven was a place of Ineffable beauty 
88 



Life, Growth, and Heaven 

bathed in the white Hght of perfect holi- 
ness. But it was still primarily a place 
of safety; the very whiteness testified to 
the blackness of the world. That world 
had been succeeded by a Heaven in which 
those who had escaped the great con- 
demnation chanted their gratitude in un- 
ending songs of praise. Heaven was a 
static state of bliss. 

The Middle Ages differed funda- 
mentally from the modern age in the om- 
nipresence of the thought of death and 
the absence of the idea of progress. 
The mediaeval imagination was obsessed 
with the thought of death ; it haunted the 
happiest hours; its shadow fell on the 
noblest companionship; it lay in wait at 
every turn of the road; art made it ter- 
rible by a ghastly realism; Everyman 
was always moving, reluctant and shrink- 
ing, to his open grave ; the symbols on the 
tombs were the symbols of mortality; the 
image of the crucified Christ faced one on 
all sides, the risen Christ was seen only 
over a few great altars. 
89 



Fruits of the Spirit 

And the mediaeval world was sta- 
tionary; men stood In fixed ranks and 
expected to remain In the state in which 
they were born. Society was arranged, 
so to speak, In tiers, like the audience In 
a great opera-house. Rank rose above 
rank, and the doors between the ranks 
were closed. Now and again a great 
man broke through the barriers and made 
his way from the lower to the higher 
places; but, outside the priesthood, the 
fixed order seemed to mark the perma- 
nent structure of society. Of the for- 
ward movement of humanity, of a divine 
Intention enfolding all things and bearing 
them onward, of an " Increasing pur- 
pose " running through the ages and 
making history significant, there was no 
thought save In a few prophetic minds. 

To-day the thoughts of men are dom- 
inated by life, and death has become an 
Incident In the unbroken life of the spirit; 
an incident enveloped in mystery, but still 
an Incident, not a final, decisive event. 
We accept no obstacles to life as in- 
9© 



Life, Growth, and Heaven 

surmountable; the insane are no longer 
given over to hopeless madness; the lepers 
are not driven away with stones and 
curses and compelled to proclaim them- 
selves unclean; punishment for crime is 
no longer torture — it is corrective, like 
the surgeon's knife; blindness is no longer 
a state of helplessness — the blind are 
taught to see with their minds; defective 
children are educated; and society, ac- 
cepting no defect or degradation as final, 
is becoming a great organization for over- 
coming disease with health and death 
with life. The memorials of those 
whom we call dead are no longer the 
skull and crossbones, the hour-glass and 
the skeleton; they recall great moments 
thrilling with life — Farragut with his 
field-glass in his hand, Sherman riding to 
victory, Lincoln erect and commanding 
in the majesty of his noble simplicity. 
Even the mysterious figure in the Wash- 
ington cemetery, from the hand of the 
most distinguished of American sculp- 
tors, Is charged with vitality as it stands, 
91 



Fruits of the Spirit 

baffled for the moment, but with unspent 

power. The figure which dominates the j 
rehgious imagination of the world is not 
the dying but the living Christ, who 

brought life and immortality to light, and * 

who came that men might have life more j 

abundantly. I 

And to a static has succeeded a dyna- i 

mic world; a world that was not made j 

but has grown and still grows like the j 

living thing it is; not a noble piece of j 

mechanism finished by the hand of God ; 

and sent whirling into space to move by J 

an impulse imparted once for all in the ii 
pre-beginning of things, but the thought 

and purpose of the Infinite taking form I 

and motion, sustained moment by mo- | 

ment by the power of God, the witness of ^ 

his constant presence, the imitation of his ; 

thought, growing hour by hour under his j 

hand. And society is no longer station- J 

ary, but becomes more and more a living \\ 

and growing organism, enlarging its ^a 

vision of opportunity, opening its doors, i 

, adapting its institutions to. the. needs of i 

S.2 I 



Life, Growth, and Heaven 

its deepening and widening life. For 
that which is divine and immortal in the 
world is not social and political institu- 
tions, but the human spirit; and that 
which is permanent and fundamental is 
not the order of society, but the will and 
purpose and power of God behind the 
confusion of change and the restlessness 
of movement. " In Him we live and 
move and have our being." 

More and more the thoughts of men 
turn to the future of the race; more and 
more they realize that they have only a 
life interest in the treasures of civiliza- 
tion which God has placed in their hands, 
and that these things must be used not 
selfishly, but passed on to those who are 
to come after them; more and more they 
realize their duty to children; more and 
more they see that the earth ought not 
to be primarily a workshop and incident- 
ally a home, but primarily a home and 
incidentally a worlcshop. They believe 
in the upward movement of the race, and 
they stand ready to help it. The mod- 
9^ 



Fruits of the Spirit |i 

ern mind Is dominated by the thought of i 
Life; and the Inspiration of the modern 
world Is Its faith in Progress, which isj' 
the social application and expression of^l 
the thought of Life. | 

The life of the world Is still full off 
pain and strife; and Heaven Is a refuge! 
in the thought of those upon whom crush- 
ing burdens have been laid and to whom 
the breath of life has meant sorrow and 
anguish. Heaven must always be a 
refuge; but It must be Infinitely more. 
Eternity Is too long for rest after the 
struggle of earthly life; and the fatlgueJ 
of the body Is not the fatigue of the spirit. 
The sorrows of childhood overspread the 
whole sky and blot out the sun; but they 
are forgotten the next day. It may be 
that the first breath In the next stage of 
life will make disease and sorrow a faint 
memory. j 

Nor will the chief thought of the state 

of being we call Heaven be a sense of' 

rescue from a great peril; It will be aj 

sense of joy in a glorious vision of the| 

94 



Life, Growth, and Heaven 

possibilities of the fuller life. Of those 
possibilities no man has yet dreamed; 
though sometimes there come moments 
of rapture when, for a second of time, 
one feels the capacity of immortal joys 
within him. As earth was a place of 
stationary orders, so was Heaven, in the 
thoughts of many noble souls in the Mid- 
dle Ages, a place of stationary bliss, 
where choirs ceaselessly thank God for 
deliverance. 

But there Is, here on earth, a nobler 
expression of thanksgiving than the giv- 
ing of thanks. Far sweeter to a noble 
father is his son's noble use of the op- 
portunities put in his way than any words 
of gratitude; far sweeter that son's 
growth in mind and character, in useful- 
ness and influence, than any expression 
of thanks. Love finds its supreme re- 
ward In the fulfillment of its highest hopes 
for child or friend. 

Heaven must always be a place of 
refuge; but that will be only the begin- 
ning of the happiness it offers, only the 
95 



Fruits of the Spirit 

look backward at the starting-point of a 
glorious liberation of the spirit. And 
Heaven must always be a place of grati- 
tude; but the sweetest praise of the In- 
finite must be the fulfillment in His chil- 
dren of the divine possibilities He has 
wrought into their natures. 

Life and growth, the divine elements 
in the life of man on this earth, must be 
the elements of man's life in all worlds, 
and the supreme bliss which we call 
Heaven must be not only escape from the 
limitations of earth and from the evil 
in the world, but complete liberation of 
the spirit, strength of heart for all serv- 
ice, vigor of mind for all truth, purity of 
nature for the vision of God. Heaven 
is not the backward but the forward look, 
not skirting the shore in gladness that the 
perils of the voyage are over, but spread- 
ing the sail with confident gladness and 
seeking port after port in the sublime ad- 
venture of the spirit seeking God. In 
that adventure Heaven will become an 
ineffable joy in the fulfillment of the po- 
96 



Life, Growth, and Heaven 

tencles of life; not in rest, but in flight 
without fatigue; not in folding of the 
arms, but in tireless growth, will be the 
bliss which we call Heaven. 



97 



The Ultimate Companionship 

BORN in the kindhng of the im- 
agination and sinking its roots 
deep in those instincts which are the rec- 
ords of the primitive nature and earHest 
education of men in this world, love rises 
steadily through desire, passion, posses- 
sion, to a companionship so intimate and 
so complete that it includes and draws 
nourishment from every interest and oc- 
cupation. This perfect companionship Is 
not always realized even by those who 
love greatly and wisely; for It is the latest 
of the many stages through which this 
master passion passes, the ultimate 
phase In this supreme experience. For 
love has Its appointed ways and degrees 
of growth, and the most tender and de- 
voted hand cannot pluck at will those 
ripe fruits which attain perfection only 
on the westward reaches of life, when 
the afternoon sun lies warmest and lln- 
98 



The Ultimate Companionship 

gers longest. After the passion of youth 
and the deep-moving tides of maturity 
there comes, in the fulfillment of the 
promise of love, a wide, rich, reposeful 
harmony born in the long years of ad- 
justment, of mutual knowledge, of fellow- 
ship in the ways and works of the days 
as they come with their gifts and depart 
with hands emptied by those who have 
recognized the princely possessions borne 
In humblest guise. As In the later 
autumn there falls on the world of toll 
and strife a peace so deep that It seems 
to sink to the roots of things In the 
earth, and so wide that all worlds seem 
to be folded In it — the sudden emer- 
gence of the poetry or soul of the fields 
out of the secret places where life is 
nourished; so after the vicissitudes and 
tumults of the years of action there 
comes a deep and tranquil happiness In 
which all things partake, and In partak- 
ing catch the light of the spirit which 
hides within all material forms and 
shapes. 

99 



Fruits of the Spirit | 

This complete surrender of personal- 
ity to personality, in which the self- 
fulfillment of the Western idealist is ac- i 
compllshed by the self-effacement which ; 
the Eastern idealist pursues as the end I 
of the earthly hfe, is not secured between i 
strong natures without the breaking of i 
bars and the forcing of locks. It is a 'i 
natural instinct, when one Is stricken, to ; 
seek silence and solitude; and the finest 
and best are those whose desperate de- j. 
sire, when wounds are deep, is not only : 
to escape from the sight and sound of ^ 
the world, but to take refuge from those i 
who are nearest and dearest. In the i 
closest of all relations this Instinct some- ^ 
times asserts itself most powerfully. I 
The garrulous; the seekers after sym- I 
pathy — of whom there are many — I 
those who cry out when they are struck, I 
not only find It easy to confide, but to j 
get nourishment for egotism by the very | 
recital of their sorrows. But those ; 
whose suffering cuts deeper, who have | 
that higher reverence for themselves 

lOO 



The Ultimate Companionship 

which breeds reticence, whose habit it is 
to bear for others instead of asking others 
to bear for them, who are so repelled 
by the corruption of self-pity that they 
would rather endure torture than be cor- 
rupted by it, are driven back upon them- 
selves, and by the very measure of their 
love are held back from speech. When 
Brutus was bringing his pure if some- 
what narrow spirit to the point of con- 
spiring against 

. . . one 

That unassailable holds on his rank, 

Unshaked of motion, 

he kept his own counsel, and held apart 
from the noble woman who was Cato's 
daughter, and whom " Lord Brutus took 
to wife." It was the supreme night of 
his life, in the long hours of which his 
fate was as surely accomplished as it 
was later unfolded to the sight of men 
at Philippi; terrors and prodigies of sight 
and sound in the streets of Rome por- 
tended doom; but Brutus, in the awful 
hour of fate, was alone in his orchard. 

lOI 



Fruits of the Spirit 

The note of indignant remonstrance 
which vibrates in Portia's passionate 
assertion of her right to share the last 
secret of his fate, to drink with him the 
final cup of experience, rings true to the 
highest ideal of love that had passed on 
to perfect companionship: 

Am I yourself 
But as It were, in sort or limitation, 
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed, 
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in 

the suburbs 
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more, 
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife. 

There Is but one reply to words of such 
self-revealing authority as these, and 
Brutus, who Is compact of all nobility, 
flashes back the answer : 

O ye gods, 
Render me worthy of this noble wife! 

... by and by thy bosom shall partake 
The secrets of my heart. 

All my engagements I will construe to thee. 
All the charactery of my sad brows. 

It Is the office of love not to spare but 
1 02 



The Ultimate Companionship 

to share; to divide not only the utter- 
most joy but the ultimate sorrow; to 
stand bound by the divinest of ties, not 
only when bells are rung and the sweet- 
ness of flowers is in the air, but when 
the Great Intruder has passed the door 
and stands in the room, and mortality 
waits helpless and dumb on the majestic 
presence which comes to all, and comes 
by higher compulsion than human invita- 
tion. It is the supreme privilege of 
love to share not only life but death; to 
stand unshattered when the foundations 
are broken up. 

And this perfect companionship, of 
which Browning grasps the final glorious 
vision in the imagery of " Prospice," 

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that 
rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of 
pain, 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest! 



103 



Fruits of the Spirit 

is not gained in a day; it is the rich 
and indestructible result of a lifelong 
habit of keeping the heart bare and the 
soul open and the conscience in one 
another's view. They alone climb the 
last heights of happiness who share the 
perils and toils of the way as completely 
as they share its inspirations, its ex- 
hilarations, its joy of arching sky and 
expanding earth. For love is not only 
tender and delicate and to be cherished 
with infinite care; it is also hardy, vigor- 
ous, fashioned for all tasks, capable of 
all resistance; the only immortal posses- 
sion in a world which is but a symbol of 
mutability and perishableness. And in 
its perfection it belongs to those only 
who keep nothing back, but give their 
treasures of weakness as well as of 
strength, their wealth of care and anxiety 
as well as of peace and joy. 



104 



The Prophecy of Love 

THE beginnings of life are always 
hidden in mystery; for there is 
something divine in all births. At the 
starting-point of Hfe, as at its finish, there 
are clouds and darkness. Out of the 
mystery of infinity and eternity we come, 
and into the mystery of infinity and 
eternity we go, and there is neither be- 
ginning nor end within the range of our 
vision. When the light first rests on us, 
we are already shaped and fashioned; the 
mystery of birth has been accomplished; 
the mystery of growth remains. 

When the slender blade breaks the 
soil and lifts its fragile stem to the sun, 
the protecting darkness, which enfolded 
its escape from the hardness of the seed 
and the faint stirring of its first instinc- 
tive endeavor toward the light, has van- 
ished. For a little time it lives and 
thrives and ripens in the open, with the 
i05 



Fruits of the Spirit 

free heavens above It and the searching 
winds cherishing its sweetness or beating 
its fiber into strength arvd comehness; and 
then, yielding up its life in the multiply- 
ing of lives like its own, it sinks back into 
the darkness and the earth receives it 
again into the mystery from which it 
emerged. And so the tide of beauty and 
fertility perpetually ebbs and flows from 
the unseen to the unseen, and the miracle 
of life hastening to death and death sow- 
ing the seeds of life is wrought under the 
chill of the wintry stars and the soft 
splendor of the summer skies. 

We, too, have our roots hidden in the 
soil of life; for us, as for the flower, 
there is the warm nourishing of the sun 
and the stern wrestling with the wind, j 
and then comes the silence and the ; 
mystery. Like the bird in the legend, 
we suddenly emerge from the night Into 
the hall where there is the blaze of fire ; 
and the glow of lights, and then we van- 
ish again Into the refuge of darkness, and 
nothing remains save a brief memory of 
1 06 



The Prophecy of Love 

delicate or vigorous wings and a song 
that throbbed for an hour and died into 
silence. Out of mystery, across a little 
space of brightness, into mystery: that 
is the story of earthly life. It is a leaf 
in a book which we read by the glow of 
a brief candle; a story of which a single 
chapter is legible; a journey of which but 
one stage is accomplished in our sight; 
a drama without a prologue, and the 
epilogue of which is spoken on a vaster 
stage. 

As the beauty of the tree, in the 
strength of its symmetry and the knit- 
ting together of Its structure, in the 
reach and delicacy of its foliage. In the 
sweetness of Its brief flowering and the 
richness of Its fruitage, has its source 
and fountain in the hidden beginnings 
of its life and Is but the unfolding of 
that which lay unrevealed In the secret 
place of its birth, so the strong and ten- 
der and powerful forces of our nature, 
the capacities for devotion, sacrifice, 
heroism, the passion for purity and 
107 



Fruits of the Spirit 

peace, the divine energy of growth, which 
give the brief record of life here its un- 
speakable pathos and splendor, have their 
roots far back in the divine world out of 
which we come and to which we go. 

No searching, however ardent and 
tireless, has laid bare the sources of life; 
no accuracy or delicacy of instrument has 
done more than carry the light a little 
further back and uncover a little more 
of the mystery that becomes ever more 
mysterious. If by searching God can- 
not be found, neither by searching can 
the birth of the soul be uncovered. Be- 
cause we are His children, born of His 
will, bearing His image, partakers of His 
thought, educated in His school to enter 
into His life, no hand will ever b^ laid 
on the place where we were born, and 
the sacredness of our souls will be pro- 
tected forever by an impenetrable mys- 
tery of light; for there is a privacy of 
light as well as of darkness, and the glory 
of the Lord is as baffling to the irreverent 
eyes that search without love as in the 
io8 



The Prophecy of Love 

clouds and darkness which surround His 
throne. 

When we come into the light, a thou- 
sand prophecies come with us, witnesses 
of our royal birth and forerunners of 
our royal fortunes. There, at the first 
dawning of our mortality. Love suffers 
and waits. Before we came Love was; 
we heard its call, though we have no 
memory of the hour and the place where 
it found us. But the call of human love 
was but a faint, far cry compared with 
the summoning of the love of the Infi- 
nite, whose thoughts we are, whose uni- 
verse is our home, whose fathomless 
passion for our likeness to Himself willed 
our being and prepared the way for us 
by planting the passion of love in human 
souls, as the consummation of experience 
and the fulfillment of life, and the per- 
petual witness of His heart toward men. 
Against the background of the mystery 
of His being the worlds are but things 
of yesterday, and Love is as old as He; 
for He is Love. Before all worlds this 
109 



Fruits of the Spirit 

divine energy of the soul, forever seeking 
its highest good in the good of its mate, 
its supremest joy in the happiness of its 
fellow, its perfect growth in the growth 
of its kin, the fulfillment of itself in the 
completeness of another, had its birth; 
and, when the worlds have been resolved 
back into the elements of which they were 
formed, it will still be seeking its perfect 
expression in devotion and service and 
immortal companionship. Disguised un- 
der all manner of obscure garbs, rejected 
and cast out in hours of blindness, com- 
pelled to bear company with all unclean- 
ness, touched but never stained by all 
defilement. Love walks the earth in the 
image of God and bearing perpetual wit- 
ness to His unseen presence. As all life 
comes into visible being at its call, so all 
life culminates and is fulfilled in its un- 
folding. All life predicts its coming and 
all life is the witness of its presence. 



no 



\ 



The Great Refusal 

THE great refusal Is the refusal to 
accept the gift of life, which is the 
supreme gift of God to man. Without 
that gift all other gifts would have been 
impossible either of bestowal or of ac- 
ceptance. Men and women come into 
life without their own volition, but they 
are not compelled to accept the gift of 
life; many do not accept it; instead of 
taking it with gratitude and using It with 
the courage of Insight Into Its splendid 
possibilities, they strive to protect them- 
selves from It as If it were a menace to 
their ease, a danger to their comfort. It 
is and ought to be both, for ease and com- 
fort are perilous and despicable If one 
seeks them. There are many things of 
real value if they come to a man as the 
by-products of living, but enervating and 
corrupting If pursued as ends In them- 
selves. Popularity is an excellent and 
III 



Fruits of the Spirit 

useful possession if one does not seek it 
and is not afraid of it when it has been 
secured. Social influence and position are 
valuable if they come without seeking, 
but the woman who works for them de- 
grades her soul; there is no meanness of 
snobbery to which the social " climber " 
will not descend, no personal indignity 
to which she will not submit, on the igno- 
ble path which she has chosen. Even 
happiness, if put before honor, duty, or 
service, betrays the soul. N 

A man may live and yet refuse the gift 
of life. To exist is not to live ; they only 
live who take life with all its experiences 
with courage and joy, who not only put 
aside the fear of living but welcome the 
opportunities of living as a brave man 
welcomes a perilous chance to help or 
inspire or lead in a moment of danger. 
The fear of living is the source of that 
cowardice which empties the lives of 
many people of spiritual meaning and hu- 
man dignity. They may be blameless so 
far as external morals are concerned, and 

112 



The Great Refusal 

yet they are guilty of refusing the su- 
preme gift which God puts Into their 
hands. The pure In heart are not those 
who have never known temptation, but 
those who, fiercely tempted, have as 
fiercely resisted; or who, having fallen, 
have risen again and through purification 
made themselves clean. The heroes are 
not those who have kept away from dan- 
ger, but have faced it, suffered, and tri- 
umphed. 

Among the miserable throng of those 
who are bearing the pains of Purgatory 
there are none of whom Dante speaks 
with such scorn as " those Inert ones who 
are pleasing neither to God nor to his ene- 
mies." These wretched ones have made 
the great refusal; they have lived with- 
out praise or blame; their offense Is that 
they have been neither faithful to God 
nor rebellious. They have existed for 
themselves only. When opportunity In- 
terfered with ease, they chose ease; when 
duty came companioned by danger, they 
bolted the door and kept themselves safe; 
113 



Fruits of the Spirit 

when, in the night and storm, the cry for 
help rose above the tumult, they re- 
mained comfortable by the fire; when life 
offered great enterprises, with the toil 
and peril which make success a matter of 
character as well as of opportunity, they 
stayed securely at home. 

The fear of living prompts men to ac- 
cept narrow positions without outlook on 
the future for the sake of security against 
the vicissitudes of business; to accept a 
small fixed income because it provides im- 
mediate comfort, rather than take those 
longer chances of fortune which impose 
patience, self-denial, and the training of 
experience at the start. Marriage brings 
heavy responsibilities; it Interferes with 
the freedom to be selfish without protest 
or criticism; it means many surrenders of 
small comforts which are dear to those 
whose idea of life Is to keep clear of 
obligations; it forces a man to think some- 
times of another when he wishes to think 
all the time and only of himself. 

The making and keeping of a home 
114 



The Great Refusal 

necessitates self-sacrifice, work, and the 
expenditure of time and strength. It in- 
terferes with that opportunity to do at 
any moment whatever you want to do 
which many unfortunate people call 
'' freedom of life," and who therefore 
avoid the complications of home-making 
and home-keeping. The people who 
make this great refusal do not know what 
the words " freedom of life " mean; they 
put ease of condition in place of some of 
the supreme joys of living. To bring 
children into life is to tie one's self with 
many bands of duty, to limit one's ability 
to spend money freely on pleasure, to 
limit one's freedom in the matter of time 
and place, to Invoke a thousand cares and 
burdens; the coming of a child is the 
most insidious form of teaching unself- 
ishness which the Heavenly Father has 
yet discovered. To refuse the gift of 
children is to close the door In the face 
of a great, enduring, and wonderful hap- 
piness. It is to avoid the noblest chance 
of education which life offers. And yet 
115 



Fruits of the Spirit 

thousands of people do this simply to 
escape being "bothered;" men want to 
keep clear of all relations which bring 
any obligations with them in order that 
they may be free to be perfectly selfish; 
women want to be free from the cares of 
maternity in order that they may devote 
themselves entirely to social life or to 
what they call a " career," as if the ful- 
fillment of the oldest, most fundamental, 
and divinest of all human functions was 
not the richest, most influnential, and 
happiest career open to men and women, 
the only really creative function com- 
mitted to them. No people are more to 
be pitied than the young men and women 
who marry as a further step in selfish- 
ness; who live in hotels or take their 
meals at restaurants in order to escape 
the responsibilities of having a home; 
who profane a noble relationship and de- 
feat one of the great ends of marriage 
by agreeing not to have children because 
children are " such a bother." 

These unfortunate people blight their 
ii6 



The Great Refusal 

souls at the very start, cut all the deeper 
roots of life, and condemn themselves to 
a thin, narrow, superficial life, in order 
to escape the very things they were sent 
into life to achieve. They make the 
great refusal before they know what they 
are refusing; they shut the door in face of 
happiness in the vain endeavor to make 
comfortable for their bodies a world 
which was framed to liberate and inspire 
their spirits. They fall into one of the 
most insidious forms of sensualism and 
one of the most devitalizing forms of 
skepticism. 

Without a strain of heroism life is 
poor and mean. Cowardice is fatal to 
nobility. Those who want life without 
paying for it not only fail to get it but do 
not know what they are losing; that is 
the penalty of cowardice. By work life 
becomes an achievement, by surmounting 
obstacles and facing dangers men and 
women become the masters of them- 
selves; by self-denial and glad acceptance, 
by greeting the " Unseen with a cheer," 
117 



Fruits of the Spirit 

they make the great acceptance and be- 
come worthy of God^s great gift to his 
children. 

In the hour of sorest trial, poor, lonely, 
ill, Beethoven faced life with unflinching 
courage, and life poured into him the 
wealth of knowledge and feeling which 
enriched all time in the " Ninth Sym- 
phony." " From the brink of the grave," 
said a noble Frenchman recovering from 
a perilous illness, " I measured not the 
vanity of life, but its importance." 



ii8 



Discredited Witnesses 

SITTING before an open fire in a pri- 
vate library not long ago, a man of 
distinction, whose artistic skill is matched 
by a conscience as sensitive and exacting, 
told the story of his escape from hard and 
narrow conditions, his education by a se- 
ries of apparently casual contacts with 
trained artists, his final success and per- 
sonal happiness coming like a sudden 
burst of sunlight through dense clouds; 
adding, half to himself, " What a fairy 
story!" It was more wonderful than 
any fairy tale, for it was a chapter out of 
the great adventure of life. From the 
earliest times men have been trying to 
dramatize this adventure in all manner 
of legends, myths, dramas, and stories. 
However hard their conditions, some- 
thing within them has always borne wit- 
ness to a great destiny; and In their worst 
estate of degradation and misery there 
119 



Fruits of the Spirit 

has been a mystery about them, as of 
heirs of a kingdom become for the mo- 
ment tenders of swine. 

It is true, there have always been 
those who insisted that the herding of 
swine, the heartbreaking toil in the field, 
the wretchedness and hunger, are the 
whole of life, and that the dreams of 
happiness which make the night tolerable 
are mere fancies of visionary minds. 
"Away with such anodynes!" they 
have said; " let us be men and face the 
facts." And in every time there have 
been those who succumbed to the blight 
of this teaching and have eaten their 
hearts out in bitterness of despair, or 
wasted their fortunes in a vain attempt to 
make a sleeping potion of pleasure and 
drown their misery in unconsciousness. 

But there have been those also who 
have rejected this teaching because it was 
not the doctrine of men and because it 
did not face the facts, and have commit- 
ted their hearts to the keeping of their 
highest visions; not because their visions 
1 20 



Discredited Witnesses 

were beautiful or comforting, but be- 
cause they made life explicable by bring- 
ing into view the truth within as well as 
the truth without the soul; because they 
have accepted the reality of the mind as 
well as of the brain, of the affections as 
well as of the passions, of the intuitions 
as well as of the instincts, of the imagina- 
tion as well as of the eye. 

These believers in visions, moreover, 
have refused to accept all witnesses as of 
equal credibility in the court of reason; 
and have insisted on an examination of 
the credentials of those who came to tes- 
tify concerning the facts of life. They 
have applied the test of character and 
have challenged those whose record has 
given ground for suspicion of their com- 
petency and veracity. Shall the evidence 
of the lawless be counted of equal author- 
ity with that of those who hold them- 
selves obedient to the law? Shall the re- 
port of the drunkard count with that of 
the clear-eyed man of integrity? Shall 
the man of ungovernable passions have 

121 



Fruits of the Spirit 

equal weight with the man who rules him- 
self? Shall he who sinks to the animal 
speak with the authority of him who 
rises to the saint and hero? Shall the 
liar and thief and sensualist have the 
weight of the truthful, the honorable, the 
pure In heart? 

In the great court in which life is on 
trial these witnesses are Incompetent. 
Their testimony often has the thrilling 
interest of tragedy, the beauty of delicate 
art, the impressiveness of ruined great- 
ness; it is profoundly Interesting and sig- 
nificant as throwing light on the reactions 
of lawlessness on mind and body, on 
morbid conditions of psychology, on 
diseases of mind and soul; but It has no 
weight in interpreting the facts of life and 
penetrating to the meaning of the vast 
order of things by which men are sur- 
rounded. Only the sound in body and 
mind, the clear-eyed, those to whom 
obedience to the law of life has brought 
the knowledge of life, are entitled to 
credence In the court where life is on trial, 

122 



Discredited Witnesses 

the judgment place where its nature and 
meaning are demanded and must be re- 
vealed. 

In that august place only the sane 
have a right to be heard; but it is a pa- 
thetic and significant fact that the insane 
crowd the place of judgment and pour 
out their woes as if they were the sor- 
rows of mankind Instead of the misery 
they have brought on themselves; as if 
the uncovering of disease in their own 
minds and bodies were the uncovering of 
the health of the race. 

Only those protest against the injustice 
of the moral order of life who have never 
obeyed it and do not know what wonders 
of strength and peace are wrought in the 
hearts of men by obedience. They bare 
their self-inflicted wounds and say, " Be- 
hold the blows of fate ! " They drama- 
tize the tragedies of sin of which they 
have made themselves the victims, and 
cry aloud, *' Behold the misery, of the 
world ! " They tell appalling stories of 
their defeated hopes, their ruined careers, 
123 



Fruits of the Spirit 

their bHghted genius, and say, " This is 
life." 

Is it? Is the beauty of love and self- 
sacrifice and purity to be found behind 
prison bars? Are the clear insights, the 
penetrating glimpses, the far-ranging 
visions of the possibilities of the human 
spirit to be sought in the places where the 
insane are protected from themselves? 
Many things are to be learned among 
criminals and the insane; they witness to 
the inevitableness of the punishment that 
follows swift-footed on the broken law. 
But of the vast order which lies behind 
the law and is protected by it nothing is 
to be learned in these places of restraint 
or punishment. The lawbreakers of ge- 
nius can make an awful picture of the 
misery that follows the doing of evil; but 
he has no power to depict the sweetness 
of purity, the peace of integrity, the joy 
of love. The destroyers of life know 
nothing of the exceeding great rewards of 
life. They fill the air with their outcries 
and protests, and many are imposed upon 
124 



Discredited Witnesses 

by the volume of sound that comes from 
them; but if they were multiplied a thou- 
sandfold, they would still be impotent 
witnesses to the nature and meaning of 
life, because they have disqualified them- 
selves from understanding it. They are 
the witnesses to the tragedy of blinding 
the eyes and stopping the ears in a world 
of great visions and noble harmonies. 



125 



'' There Are No Dead '' 

WE have done much to Christianize 
our farewells to those who have 
gone before us into the next stage of life. 
We no longer darken the rooms that 
now more than ever need the light and 
warmth of the sun; we no longer close 
the windows as if to shut out Nature at 
the moment when we are about to give 
back to Mother Earth all that was mor- 
tal in the earthy career now finished; we 
no longer shroud the house in black, we 
make it sweet with flowers, for the hymns 
of grief we are fast substituting the 
hymns of victory; for words charged with 
a sense of loss we listen to words that 
hold wide the door of hope and faith; 
and on the memorials which we place 
where they lie who have vanished from 
our sight we no longer carve the skull 
and cross-bones, the hour-glass and the 
scythe — we recall some trait or quality or 
126 



" There Are No Dead " 

achievement that survives the body and 
commemorates the spirit. 

We have done much to Christianize 
our treatment of what we call death, to 
emphasize our faith in the immortal life; 
but we do not take to ourselves the im- 
mense helpfulness, the radiancy of joy, in 
the sublime truth which Christ brought 
to light. There is still too much of the 
shadowy vagueness of the early pagan 
thought of the future ; and many are miss- 
ing not only an hourly comfort, but a 
deep peace of spirit and a glorious ex- 
pectation. 

We confuse ourselves by the forms of 
speech we use when we talk of this life 
and of the future life as if they were two 
lives, of our mortal life as if it were 
different in kind from the immortal life. 
There is only one life, and that is im- 
mortal, here and now. The life of the 
body is not our life any more than we are 
the houses we live in. The house may 
be destroyed or may decay, but we are 
not imprisoned in it, and its fate is not our 
127 



Fruits of the Spirit 

fate. We can go out of it when we 
choose and make ourselves another 
house. Our bodies are the servants of 
our spirits; after a time they may cease 
to obey us, but because the eyes refuse to 
see, the sense of vision is not impaired; 
because the feet refuse to walk, the mind 
does not cease to travel. When an in- 
jury befalls us, we do not say, *' I am 
broken; " we say, " My arm is broken." 
In speech and in action we habitually dis- 
sociate ourselves from our bodies and af- 
firm our superiority to them. Shattered, 
broken, tortured with pain, we remained 
undismayed and unsubdued. Ney, who 
was called the lion of the French army, 
was of highly sensitive physical organiza- 
tion. On one occasion, when he was 
directing a battle from an eminence under 
heavy fire, he noticed that his aides were 
smiling. Looking down, he saw that his 
knees were rattling against his saddle. 
" You poor knees," he said, " how you 
would rattle if you knew where I am go- 
ing to take you in a minute ! " 
128 



" There Are No Dead " 

The bravest men are not those who are 
Insensible to physical fear, but those who 
master It by courage of spirit, the purest 
and noblest are not those who have never 
felt the temptations of the body but those 
who have resisted them. There Is no 
body In the sense of something fixed and 
complete apart from the spirit; the body, 
like the earth to which It returns. Is never 
the same two days In succession. It Is 
always changing, and the man of seventy- 
five has already lived In seven or eight 
bodies. It Is literally true that we " die 
dally " In the only sense In which we ever 
die; that Is to say, we change; which Is 
what death really means. 

When the boy In ^' The Blue Bird" 
goes with fear and trembling Into the 
burying ground, he finds It a sunny mea- 
dow, and cries out to his frightened sis- 
ter, "There are no dead!'' The ques- 
tion Is sometimes asked, " Does death 
end all? " Death ends nothing; It Is sim- 
ply a change. There are no dead In the 
sense In which the phrase Is commonly 
129 



Fruits of the Spirit 

used; there are only the hvlng in the vast 
mystery of life which enfolds us all, on 
the fathomless stream of life which bears 
us all forward. We are here for a little 
time, as we are often in inns where we 
make friends who are dear to us, and then 
we leave them and go on to another stage 
in our journey, we miss them and they 
miss us, and neither their places nor ours 
are ever taken by others. But we see 
new landscapes and pass through new ex- 
periences into a larger world, and they 
presently follow us. We are separated 
and are often lonely, but we look forward 
joyfully to new sights and sounds, and to 
the hour when, further on in the journey 
we shall look into their eyes and hear 
their voices. 

To think of life as one and indivisible, 
of immortality as our possession, here 
and now, of death as normal change in an 
eternal process of growth, of those whom 
we call dead as more intensely alive than 
when we saw them, is to transform the 
experience which has overshadowed the 
130 



'' There Are No Dead " 

world for centuries as the end of hap- 
piness into a larger freedom and joy, and 
to make immortality not a vague expecta- 
tion but a glorious opening of the doors 
and windows of the house of life. 
*' While we poor wayfarers still toil, with 
hot and bleeding feet, along the highway 
and the dust of life," writes Dr. Martin- 
eau, " our companions have but mounted 
the divergent path, to explore the more 
sacred streams, and visit the divine vales, 
and wander amid the everlasting Alps of 
God's upper provinces of creation. And 
so we keep up the courage of our hearts, 
and refresh ourselves with the memories 
of love, and travel forward in the ways 
of duty, with less weary step, feeling ever 
for the hand of God, and listening for 
the domestic voices of the immortals 
whose happy welcome awaits us. Death, 
in short, under the Christian aspect, is 
but God's method of colonization; the 
transition from this mother country of 
our race to the fairer and newer world of 
our emigration." 

131 



The Larger Plan 

IN those years which we call prosper- 
ous because our plans are successfully 
carried out, and our fields are fertile, 
and the shadow of sorrow does not fall 
athwart the sunshine, we have a sense of 
being at ease in the world, of mastery of 
the conditions of life. There steals into 
our minds the belief that we have learned 
the secrets of success, and into our hearts 
the feeling that God is watching over us 
in a special sense, and that we are trusted 
with the shaping of our lives; and this 
confidence in ourselves is reinforced by 
the deference which is always paid, not 
so much to the character as to the 
judgment of those to whom success seems 
to have become a matter of habit. In 
the warm air of outward prosperity the 
direction of life seems to have been put 
in our hands and our will takes the place 
of the will of God. 

132 



The Larger Plan 

But sooner or later this seeming se- 
curity is disturbed; plans go awry; dear 
hopes are blasted; defeat comes late and 
brings an added bitterness with it; over 
the happy circle apparently strongly in- 
trenched against misfortune sorrow hangs 
like a cloud ominous with disaster. 

Then comes the crisis in our spiritual 
life; we have become accustomed to re- 
gard our will as the will of God; can we 
make the will of God our will? We 
have thought of Providence as a warm 
light making our path a line of bright- 
ness; can we walk through storm and 
disaster, encompassed with darkness, and 
still feel that " we cannot drift beyond 
His love and care"? Can we cease to 
plan each step into the unknown future 
apd accept His plan? 
I This is a strength beyond the strength 
or the man who is strong in himself: the 
strength of the man who is strong in his 
faith in God. There is a higher wisdom 
than that which plans with clear-sighted 
prevision for the future: the wisdom 
133 



Fruits of the Spirit 

which accepts the plan of God and loyally 
works with it, without repining or dis- 
couragement or paralysis of energy. 
There is a truer prosperity than the fer- 
tility of our fields and the increasing re- 
turns of our investments: the prosperity 
of growing integrity, of deepening love, 
of widening sympathy, of that calm 
strength of soul which takes a man from 
under the dominion of things and puts 
him under the dominion of God; which 
transfers him from servitude to things 
that surround him to that loyalty to the 
things of the spirit which sets his soul 
erect above the changes of his mortal 
condition. 

" The soul ceases to weary itself with 
planning and foreseeing," wrote Jean 
Nicolas Grou, " giving itself up to God's 
Holy Spirit within, and to the teachings 
of his providence without. He is not 
forever fretting as to his progress, or 
looking back to see how far he is getting 
on; rather he goes steadily and quietly on, 
and makes all the more progress because 
134 



The Larger Plan 

It IS unconscious. So he never gets 
troubled and discouraged; if he falls, he 
humbles himself, but gets up at once, and 
goes on with renewed earnestness." 

The burden of shaping an Immortal 
life with so slight a knowledge of its pos- 
sibilities and of the outcome of events Is 
too heavy to be borne. We all move 
about in " worlds half realized; " we do 
not know at the moment what happenings 
are fortunate and what are unfortunate. 
The years that seem prosperous to us are 
often barren of real happiness of that 
growth of the spirit which is the end of 
all living; while the years that seem bleak 
and unfertile often enrich us beyond our 
dreams. No man has the knowledge of 
the future, the Insight Into events, the 
wisdom of experience, to plan his life 
completely and carry his plans into execu- 
tion. God alone knows how the human 
spirit can fulfill Its great destinies. Our 
part is to work with him; to recognize 
our Ignorance and his knowledge, and 
consciously to hold our plans In subjec- 
ts 



■' I 

Fruits of the Spirit | 

tion to his will. Then when our best-laid J 

and most cherished plans go awry we jj 

shall have no sense of failure, but the fj 
consciousness of a vaster design being 
wrought out through us and for us. 



136 



Love's Second Sight 

AMONG the maxims which have 
their roots in confusion of thought 
none is more misleading than the ancient 
and well-worn aphorism that love is 
blind. The fable of Psyche has been tra- 
ditionally interpreted as a pathetic in- 
stance of that curiosity which opened 
Pandora's box and let a swarm of evils 
fly over the world, and which drove Elsa 
to put the fateful question to Lohengrin 
at the very moment when her joy was at 
its consummation. The beautiful story, 
so weighted with the deeper meaning of 
things, bears another higher interpreta- 
tion; for the soul cannot surrender until 
it understands, nor drain the cup of the 
deepest experience until it sees clearly the 
figure in whose hands it is held. 

If love were blind, life would sink into 

chaos; for love Is the force that creates, 

the power that sustains, the principle that 

governs. It is the love of his art which 

137 



Fruits of the Spirit 

draws the artist, unwearied by heroic 
apprenticeship, into the very heart of 
his art and makes his passion one with 
insight, skill, the final mastery of the 
line. If love were blind, those forms in 
which the visions and ideals that bear 
with them the fortunes of the race, be- 
cause they are the symbols of its spirit- 
ual insights and achievements, would 
never have been set in temples and on 
highways by those who counted no toil 
too heavy, no sacrifice too great, that 
celebrated the marriage of love and art. 
To him only who loves with a consuming 
passion the final veil is lifted and the 
ultimate skill conveyed; for knowledge 
and love are one at the heart of things, 
and art, which is the record of the crea- 
tive spirit working with and through men, 
touches perfection only when passion and 
Intelligence are so blended that out of 
this commingling another word is spoken 
In the revelation of the divine to the 
human. 

Love is never blind; those who love 
138 



Love's Second Sight 

are often blind, and to their passion is 
charged that which belongs to lack of 
faculty. Love does not open new senses 
or convey new faculties; it vivifies, clari- 
fies, intensifies the senses and faculties 
which already exist. In its first day- 
break the world lies half concealed in a 
mist which poetizes rather than distorts 
or falsifies proportions, relations, quali- 
ties; when the light grows clear, per- 
spectives are corrected, outlines become 
distinct, hidden lovelinesses come into 
view, hidden defects disclose themselves; 
not because the light and warmth are less, 
but because they are greater. To 
measure the depth of love by its blindness 
would be to appraise the splendor and 
fertilizing power of the sun by the rays 
which shine level from the horizon rather 
than by those which fall upon the soil and 
search its secret places for every potency 
of life. 

The blindness of love is a measure of 
its inadequacy, an evidence that it has 
yet to work its miracle of knowledge as 
139 



Fruits of the Spirit \ 

well as of surrender. The mother who ■ 

sees no fault in her child is blinded, not ; 

by her love, but by her dullness of per- ' 

ceptlon; the wife who finds no defect in j 

her husband may make him comfortable | 

but cannot make him great; the friend \ 
who finds only content in his love for his 

friend Is denied the highest service of : 

friendship; for, as Emerson said, "our \ 

friends are those who make us do what i 

we can." The faithful mothers, wives, j 
and friends who accept us as we are as 

often harm as help us; they live with us j 

only on the lower levels of being; they * 
neither climb nor stir us to climb. Love 
that is content robs us of the best it has 

to bestow, and is satisfied with gifts of : 
bread and wine when It might bestow 

upon us vision, inspiration, character. ; 

They love noblest who see clearest, and , 
they bind us with bands of steel who so 

awaken the best In us that when at last j 

we put forth our hands to grasp the ' 

highest things, behold I our hands are \ 

clasped in theirs. j 
140 



Love's Second Sight 

The beginning of love is often a brief 
madness; the end of love is perfect sanity, 
between the dawn and the full day lies 
the long, gradual illumination. Irony, 
satire, and cheap cynicism must not make 
us blind to the beauty of the illusion in 
which love begins — the illusion of per- 
fection. For love seeks perfection be- 
cause In perfection alone its possibilities 
are perfectly realized. There Is an hour 
of prophecy In all noble beginnings. The 
artist dreams the dream of beauty before 
he enters on the long path of toil and 
anguish of spirit which must be traveled 
to the bitter end before that dream be- 
comes his possession. First In every 
great career comes an hour of vision; 
then years of toil and discipline when the 
vision seems to have vanished utterly; 
then Its gradual disclosure In the work of 
a lifetime as the work nears Its com- 
pletion and Its lines come into view. 
(Ideals are Idle dreams unless they are 
wrought Into character by the routine, 
drudgery, and toil which seem at times 
141 



Fruits of the Spirit 

to remove them to an inaccessible 
distance. } 

Love begins with a vision: it passes 
through the travail of the years; the dis- 
illusions which are part of the waking 
day; the monotony of daily duty; the 
wearing away of the flush of the morn- 
ing, the fading of the earliest bloom; 
and then at the end, behold! the vision 
is there again, no longer lying like a 
bloom diffused from the sky, but like a 
loveliness rising from the depths of life. 
Between the vision and its realization lies 
the training in clear sight, the education 
in full knowledge, which the blind call 
disillusion but which the clear-sighted call 
the divine opportunity of love; and the 
realization of the vision depends, net on 
the early glow, but on the high, clear, 
later light. Not to the blind, the in- 
dulgent, the slothful lovers come the 
great realizations of the final growth, but 
to those whom love has made wise in 
severity, resolute in demand,i heroic in 
loyalty to the highest in the beloved. 
142 



Lovers Second Sight 

Perfection of character, entire harmony 
of nature, instant adjustment of mood 
with mood, if they were possible at the 
beginning, would defeat the highest serv- 
ice and joy of love, which is to see in 
the Imperfect the promise of the perfect 
as the deep-sighted see in man the image 
and nature of the divine. 

It is the second sight of love which 
makes it the joy of life as well as its 
inspiration ;(^behlnd the present Imper- 
fection which it clearly sees, rises always 
the image of that beauty which is to be 
when all the ends of mortal life have 
been fulfilled. It Is to the blind that 
clear sight seems disillusion; to the 
open-eyed it is the beginning of the 
realization of the vision; It is the first 
sight which prepares for the second 
sight. : Love can neither offer nor de- 
mand perfection; for perfection in this 
mortal Hfe would be as abnormal, unwel- 
come and repellent as a child with the 
knowledge and experience of a man. It 
is in the search for perfection that love 
143 



Fruits of the Spirit 

finds its highest opportunity and its 
deepening joy; in its vision that the sky 
above it kindles with a glory which does 
not fade when the sun sinks to the west, 
but glows as if an immortal morning were 
breaking. 



144 



The Child and the World 

Christmas, 1903 

THE Child born in Bethlehem nine- 
teen hundred years ago came into 
a world ruled by force, under the domin- 
ion of a race notable among the races for 
its organizing and governing genius and 
for its lack of spiritual ideas. It has been 
said of the Romans that they borrowed 
their religion and their philosophy and 
stole their art. No one of the supreme 
interests of life, save that of conduct, 
was supreme with the best of them; in no 
one of the highest fields of endeavor did 
they produce works of the highest genius. 
So capable a race could not utterly lack 
religious ideals, and the charm of their 
most intimate feeling for the divine Is 
found in their domestic deities and wor- 
ship. In the sweet familiarities with spirits 
of localities, so sympathetically described 
in the early chapters of " Marlus the 
145 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Epicurean." Such a race could not, and 
did not, lack noble-minded and noble- 
hearted men; but when all the poetry and 
piety of the Romans is generously 
measured, how far the sum of these 
things falls below their unparalleled vigor 
of action, their marvelous power of or- 
ganization ! 

It was a hard, brutal world, in spite 
of the beauty and refinement of certain as- 
pects of its civilization, into which Christ 
was born. He came, the incarnation of 
helplessness, into a society in which the 
strongest ruled by virtue of the power of 
destruction; he came, the Child of divine 
tenderness and love, into a world in 
which men held power more precious 
than love, and the ability to strike ibove 
the ability to bear. There could not 
have been a more appalling disparity than 
that which existed between the Child in 
the cradle and the ideals and order of the 
society Avhich that Child was sent to 
transform. The task laid upon the Child 
seemed impossible of achievement. To 
146 



The Child and the World 

set a Child to destroy the rule of force 
seemed like the wild dream of some fana- 
tic who knew neither the power with 
which he worked nor the power which he 
would destroy. 

But Rome has gone long ago, and the 
chief association of the name to the 
modern world is its worship of the Child. 
On Christmas Eve, in all the Western 
world, and wherever men or ideas of 
Western birth are found in the East, the 
face of the Child will look out of the mist 
of years as the divinest vision which has 
ever lightened the darkness of the world; 
and on Christmas morning there will be 
a pealing of bells that will follow the sun 
round the globe announcing again the 
glad tidings that Christ is born in 
Bethlehem. 

In that wonderful story many great 
truths are looted; supreme among them 
the blessed fact that all the best things 
of which the noblest men and women 
have dreamed are true; that no thought 
of life can be too great, and no hope of 
147 



Fruits of the Spirit 

the future too bhssful. If the most 
thoroughgoing pessimist of to-day could 
be put back into the social, political, and 
industrial conditions into which Christ 
came, so as to see them close at hand and 
feel the weight of them in his heart, he 
would break into a psalm of thanks- 
giving. We have gone but a little way 
towards the establishment of the King- 
dom of Heaven on earth, but we have 
gone far enough to change the whole 
moral landscape of life, and to light a 
thousand fires of hope and cheer where 
the night lay chill and black when the 
Child was laid In the manger at Bethle- 
hem. 

To-day that Child Is born again In a 
world ruled by greed rather than by 
force; a world In which men have gone 
far towards learning the great lessons of 
tolerance, forbearance, and peace, but In 
which they have still to learn the great 
lesson of mutual responsibility for and 
to one another. The struggle for wealth 
was never so keen and bitter; never were 
148 



The Child and the World 

so many men absorbed in it to the exclu- 
sion of all interest in the things that make 
money worth having when it has been 
gotten. The rush and tumult of the 
struggle are sometimes almost unbearable 
to those who know what life is and what 
it means; the heartlessness and needless- 
ness of the fight are sometimes so re- 
volting that one longs to get where no 
sound or sign of it can penetrate; the 
vulgarity and sham of it fill rational men 
and women with loathing. The brutal 
indifference to the rights of others; the 
relentless crushing of the weak by the 
strong; the coarse setting aside of the 
sanctities of marriage and the multipli- 
cation of legalized adulteries by means 
of cheap and easy divorce; the shoddy 
splendor and coarse manners of much 
miscalled society; the push of men whose 
only object is to " get there," the strident 
voices of women who have given up the 
old refinements of womanhood without 
gaining any real power or efficiency in 
exchange — all the noise and confusion 
149 



Fruits of the Spirit 

and crudity and vulgarity of the modern 
world at times almost blight the hopes 
and blast the spirits of those who love 
the best things. 

There are many side-lights to be 

thrown on this depressing condition of J 

things which greatly change its charac- i 

ter and give It a different and a far ( 

brighter aspect. At the very worst it Is I 

a far kindlier, more human, more unself- U 

ish world than that In which Christ was -j 

born. But, passing all those things by, | 

the season brings one great and unshak- ^^ 

able hope to our hearts: The Child who ! 
transformed the World of Force will 

also transform the World of Greed! \ 

The task seems to many to-day almost ; 

Impossible of accomplishment, so great : 

Is the disparity between the invisible \ 

power of love and the organized force ; 

of selfishness. But love and greed are \ 

far more nearly matched to the eye of ; 

the most superficial observer than were j 
love and power. The World of Greed 

is already penetrated by the Influences ; 

150 ' 



The Child and the World 

that flow from the heart and mind of 
the Child. Intent as that world is on 
its own success, it already pays love the 
respect of a decent regard for appear- 
ances; vulgar as it is, it is stirred by an 
uneasy consciousness that there are better 
things than it possesses; eager and brutal 
as it is in pursuit of its ends, it is smitten 
with the growing knowledge that it is 
being mocked by that to which it has 
given its heart, and that there is some- 
thing at work in society which defeats its 
final and perfect satisfaction with its 
gains. 

The bells of Christmas-tide ring out 
the ultimate doom of greed as they long 
ago rang out the ultimate doom of force. 
Men may think and say what they choose, 
but there is a power in the Child which 
silently and steadily saps all evil or 
lower powers; a wisdom in the Child 
which shines more and more above the 
wisdom of the wisest; a beauty which 
sinks deeper and deeper into the con- 
sciousness of the world; an ideal which 
151 



Fruits of the Spirit 

relentlessly judges all lesser ideals and 
rejects them. It may be that two 
thousand years more must pass before the 
Kingdom of Greed follows the Kingdom 
of Force ; but every year the power of the 
Child gains on the base and brutal forces 
which oppose It, and every year the love 
which the Child came to reveal lights the 
dark skies with a kindling promise of day. 



IS2 



The Deepest Thanksgiving 

FRANCIS OF SALES, a saint in na- 
ture and life as well as in name, in 
enumerating some causes of thanksgiving 
in the quaint language of the seventeenth 
century, uses these very suggestive words : 

Consider the bodily gifts which God has 
given you; what a body, what conveniences to 
maintain it, what health and lawful comforts 
for it; what friends and assistances. And con- 
sider all this in comparison with the lot of so 
many other persons, much more worthy than 
yourself, who are destitute of all these blessings; 
some defective in body, health, and limbs; oth- 
ers subjected to reproaches, contempt, and dis- 
honor; others weighed down with poverty; and 
God has not suffered you to be so miserable. 

Consider your gifts of mind. How many 
are there in the world stupid, mad, foolish ; and 
why are you not among them? God has fa- 
vored you. How many are there who have 
been brought up coarsely and in gross igno- 
rance? And by God's providence you have 
been well nurtured and educated, 
153 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Consider your spiritual graces. . . . God has 
given you a knowledge of Himself even from 
your youth. How often has He given you His 
sacraments? How often inspirations, interior 
illuminations, and warnings for your amend- 
ment? How often has He pardoned you your 
faults? How often has He delivered you from 
occasions to sin to which you have been exposed ? 
And have not your past years been so much time 
and opportunity to advance the good of your 
soul? Consider in detail how good and gra- 
cious God has been to you. 

On Thanksgiving Day, honored now 
by the usage of many generations, em- 
phasis is generally laid on those occa- 
sions for gratitude which have a common 
claim on all the Nation; those obvious, 
general blessings which, because they 
take on National aspects, seem to have 
the most Impressive significance. For 
peace, health, freedom, prosperity, the 
large yield of the soil, and widespread 
ease of condition, there cannot be too 
much gratitude. For these material and 
physical prosperities are also spiritual 
signs of well-being; when the Nation 
154 



The Deepest Thanksgiving 

prospers in field and flock and ship, it is 
because the Nation has been industrious 
and frugal and has not held back its 
hand from danger and toil. 

But there are other and deeper causes 
for thanksgiving, and these are clearly 
seen only when behind the general 
thanksgiving men offer up to God their 
heartfelt thanks for those conditions 
which provide for the growth of the 
spirit In freedom and power. " Consider 
in detail," writes St. Francis, " how good 
and gracious God has been to you." 
Deeper than all other reasons for thanks- 
giving is the nature of God. Since He 
is what He is, all life takes on a joyful 
meaning. In the light of which hope 
shines through sorrow, and trial becomes 
a way of strength, and work a spiritual 
opportunity, and death holds in its hands 
the lamp of immortality. Because God 
is love, every man's sins are punished; 
because God Is merciful, the easy road 
to corruption Is set thick with dIfHcultles; 
because God watches over them, men 
155 



Fruits of the Spirit 

who have gone astray are suddenly dis- 
covered in their iniquities; because God 
will accept nothing ultimately but the best 
in every human soul, the discipline of life 
is searching, the burdens of life heavy, 
the disappointments of life manifold. 
Because God would make us like himself, 
life is one long, severe, exacting educa- 
tion. Because we are Immortal, we are 
never permitted to rest in mortal con- 
ditions, to find satisfaction with mortal 
possessions, to secure content In this 
mortal life. 

Above and below gratitude for pleas- 
ant paths and fertile fields and surcease 
of great anxieties there ought to be joy 
unspeakable In that gift of spiritual life 
which transforms this changing life, 
turns Its apparent adversities Into bless- 
ings, Its burdens into sources of strength, 
Its bitter partings Into prophecies of bliss- 
ful reunions. Let every man search his 
heart and his life and " consider in detail 
how good and gracious God has been." 



156 



Lodgings and Homes 

THE restlessness of the age shows 
Itself In nothing more dlsastrou^y 
than in the substitution of lodgings for 
homes. Lodgings have an Important 
place in the economy of modern life; 
they are often extremely comfortable; 
they afford greatly needed rest and 
change; they make privacy and family 
life possible In foreign countries; they are 
admirable places of refuge In prolonged 
or exhausting travel. But they are tem- 
porary and provisional; they provide 
shelter for short periods, In times of 
change, in vacations; but they are not, 
and they cannot be, solid foundations of 
repose, growth, the full and free life. 

The child misses things of inestimable 
value If he is not born In a home; and 
childhood loses Immeasurably if the word- 
home does not gain from its daily experi- 
ence a wealth of sweetness, trust, associa- 
tion, sense of security. 
157 



Fruits of the Spirit | 

In youth, when the " year of wander- i 
ing " — which is so rich in the flowering of \ 
the imagination and the opening of the [ 
spirit to the beauty and wonder of the ^ 
world — comes, the home is a rich and | 
potent background of pure memory, of i 
steadying impulses, of anchorage of the 
affections. 

When the work of life is at the flood, 
the home is a refuge from the disheart- 
ening influences which sap the strength 
of the most aspiring, a place of peace 
where the vision grows clear and cour- 
age returns and the armor is put on 
with new heart; and neither for man nor 
for woman can any kind of success, in- 
fluence, or power compensate for its loss. 
Sometimes the home must be sacrificed 
for some high duty; but nothing in con- 
temporary life is sadder than the sur- 
render of the home for those lesser ends 
which appeal so strongly in youth to men 
and women, and which, as time goes on, 
yield so little lasting reward or satisfac- 
tion. To exchange a home for what is 
158 



Lodgings and Homes 

called a " career " Is, in most cases, to 
invite at the end of the years loneliness, 
heart-sickness, and a deepening sense of 
having missed the best things in life. 

For the home is not only the sacred 
inclosure in which the finest and deepest 
affections are nourished, the tenderest 
sympathies developed, the truest and 
most fruitful impulses confirmed and 
strengthened; it is also the place of the 
most searching and liberating education. 
No later teacher has such access to the 
spirit, such approaches to the heart, as 
those who enfold the young life in an 
atmosphere of which it is unconscious, 
but which penetrates and gives color to 
its most secret thoughts. The vast ma- 
jority of the fundamental ideas come to 
the child while he is still unaware of 
their significance and unable to give them 
expression. As Titian, painting with the 
stir and movement of the vast energies of 
Venice about him, and under the spell of 
her superb vitality expressed in such 
splendor as no other city has ever been 
159 



Fruits of the Spirit ,! 

clothed with, put his childhood at Pieve , 
da Cadore into his pictures in a long i 
succession of mountain backgrounds, so j 
every man and woman of imagination i 
constantly recalls the " long, long ; 
thoughts " of youth, and draws upon the j 
inexhaustible capital of ideas, dreams, 
visions, and divinations which were part \ 
of life in the quiet places and hours of ^ 
home; and in maturer life this silent edu- | 
cation is more profound, more spiritual, j 
more illuminating than that which is fur- [ 
nished by the Church or the State, the * 
other great institutional schools of so- ] 
ciety. We are so dominated by purely j 
academic ideals that our conceptions of j 
education are often as superficial as they I 
are arrogant and positive; and in our de- 
votion to methods and instruments, to 
mere acquisition, to the trade-marks of 
education, we lose sight of its great reali- \ 
ties : the awakening of the spirit, the ^ 
quickening of the affections, the libera- i 
ting of the Imagination, the deliverance 
from the dominion of names and forms, '. 
1 60 ' 



Lodgings and Homes 

the birth into freedom and power. 
Goethe's mother did more for the train- 
ing of his genius than the University of 
Strassburg; Ruskin drew more inspira- 
tion from the beauty and nobility of those 
early readings of the Bible with his 
mother than from his studies at Oxford; 
the atmosphere of the quiet rectory at 
Somersby left a deeper impress on the 
sensitive mind of Tennyson than the years 
at Cambridge. 

There is no spectacle in life more pa- 
thetic than homeless old age. At the end 
of the working years, when the final pe- 
riod of ripening comes, the clearing of 
the air after the dust of the highway Is 
laid, the opening of the windows of the 
soul to the tranquil sunset light, the home 
becomes a temple as well as a refuge. 
There is gathered up and kept with pious 
care the remembrance of the fragrance 
of the deeds which the world so soon 
forgets; there Is preserved the memory 
of the long Integrity, the gracious court- 
esy, the old-time helpfulness; there wait 
i6i 



Fruits of the Spirit 

those dehcate ministries, those tender 
services, that reverence which distills its 
perfumes in watchful and unforgetting 
care, which are sweet and satisfying when 
fame has lost its magic, applause its in- 
toxication, and the rush and tumult of 
work and strife have become a faint, far 
sound on the horizon. 

And these deep and permanent influ- 
ences which, more than any others, shape 
the character; these sweet and spiritual 
consolations and rewards over .which 
time has no dominion; this rich and lib- 
erating education which colleges and uni- 
versities only amplify and clarify — 
these rarest and most sacred things are 
lightly put aside by hosts of men and 
women for the sake of convenience, lux- 
ury, the chance to spend more on pleas- 
ure, freedom to go and come as they 
please ! There is nothing sadder in 
modern life than this exchange of homes 
for lodgings, under the fatal delusion 
that the home confines and the lodging 
liberates; that the home is commonplace 
162 



Lodgings and Homes 

and the lodging full of novelty and in- 
terest; that the home is old-fashioned and 
out of date, and the lodging a step for- 
ward in emancipation; that the home 
means drudgery and the lodging leisure; 
that the home involves anchorage in the 
harbor and the lodging the free course 
over the open sea ! To a few men and 
women come those imperative commands 
to give up home and kindred for some 
great service which must be accepted as 
the will of God; but among all the chil- 
dren of folly none are more blind than 
those who voluntarily choose the lodging 
instead of the home. 



163 



Love and Law 

THE most sublime divination ever 
made by men is the declaration that 
God is Love. The audacity of it in a 
world devastated by sorrow and a so- 
ciety ruled by force is evidence of its 
truth. Through clouds of ignorance, 
amid cries of anguish, in the presence of 
victorious crimes and enthroned and 
sceptered wrongs, compassed about with 
apparently overwhelming evidences of 
moral chaos and spiritual wreck, the ge- 
nius that is in the soul of the race flashed 
a sudden light on the very heart of the 
mystery and found Love seated there, 
Immortal, invincible, omnipotent. Since 
that heroic word of faith was spoken 
there have been two thousand years of 
strife and misery and confusion; society 
has been shaken again and again by de- 
structive forces and rebuilt only to be 
wrecked afresh; the old order has passed 
164 



Love and Law 

and the new has come only to become old 
itself and yield to the pressure of the 
later need; the world has been lifted for 
the first time into a light of knowledge 
of its races and their conditions well-nigh 
complete; and men are appalled by the 
work to be done before human conditions 
are made wholesome and safe. 

Through all the confusion without and 
within, the vision of Love enthroned has 
never faded from the thought and faith 
of the spiritually-minded. Not only have 
all other explanations of the universe 
seemed incredible, but to reason itself 
have come great confirmations of the 
truth of the sublime divination, as 
through clouds and darkness science has 
discerned the outlines of an order, not 
fixed and abitrary, but vital, ascending, 
passing on through the passion for self 
to the passion for others, and predicting 
the other great truth that love and law 
are spirit and method in a sublime pro- 
gression of creative energy. 

The apparent antithesis between law 
165 



Fruits of the Spirit 

and love has not only led to numberless 
confusions of thought, but Is due to a 
confusion of thought. Law has been set 
before the mind of the race as austere, 
Inflexible, divinely Inexorable; the very 
structure of the moral order, the very 
fiber of the moral nature, something so 
august and sovereign that the gods have 
bowed before It; a force behind all forces 
as the Fates or Norns watched In deep 
shadows behind Zeus and Odin, and 
measured their span of life with relent- 
less fingers. Love, on the other hand, 
has been pictured as a beautiful emotion, 
a divine Impulse, a cherishing tenderness, 
a yearning over men which forgot their 
offenses in Its passion for helping them, 
but lacking divine rigor of righteousness. 
Law commanded, but love persuaded; 
law punished, but love pardoned; law en- 
forced obedience by terrible penalties, 
love stood beside the culprit and bore the 
penalties with him. Good men of logical 
mind have not only failed to understand 
the nature of Love, but have been dis- 
i66 



Love and Law 

trustful of Its integrity and doubtful of its 
power to govern. 

There have been a thousand misappre- 
hensions of Love because its lower have 
been so often mistaken for its higher man- 
ifestations. Those who love are often 
blind, but Love is never blind; those who 
love are always weak through ignorance, 
but Love is open-eyed and strong. The 
mother who defeats the growth of her 
child by releasing it from a distasteful 
discipline Is not devoted but ignorant; the 
father who shields his son from the pen- 
alties that might arrest the downward 
tendency Is not tender but cruel. Love 
neither evades nor conceals, because it 
seeks only the best, not the easiest or the 
most comfortable way for one upon 
whom It lavishes Its wealth. Law ap- 
prehends the offender If It discovers him, 
brings him to the bar and punishes him. 
It sees only the deed and can punish only 
the doer; its vision and Its power are 
wholly external. Love discerns what Is 
In the heart, commands the offender to 
J 67 



Fruits of the Spirit 

confess the offense which is still undis- 
covered, because by confession alone can 
the spirit be set right; forces the sinner 
whom it loves into the hands of law, 
stands beside him in the dock, bears with 
him the awful words of judgment, and 
goes with him to the prison which is the 
only way back to honor and peace. Be- 
fore law moved, Love saw the offense 
and gathered its awful sternness; after 
law has forgotten, Love bears the dis- 
grace and carries the badge of shame and 
endures because it punishes only to save. 
Law takes the culprit to the cell and locks 
the door, Love goes into prison and 
shares the humiliation and misery. 

For if Love is the most beautiful thing 
in the world, it is also the most terrible; 
God is Love because in his presence no 
evil can live; to all who are out of right 
relation with him he Is a consuming fire. 
Hell, whatever form it take, is not the 
measure of his wrath, but of his passion 
for purity; not the process by which he 
punishes, but by which he purifies. Even 
i68 



Love and Law 

If it were only a place of torment he must 
be in it, for wherever the spirits of men 
cry out unconsciously in the bitterness of 
misdirected energy, lost opportunity, in- 
fidelity to the highest in them, there he 
must be; and where he is, there may be 
suffering but there cannot be the torment 
of despair. Law regulates the conduct, 
but Love cleanses the very springs of be- 
ing; law punishes, but Love compels the 
rebuilding of the nature. The return to 
life is often far more painful than death; 
and the power which banishes death im- 
poses the agony of rebirth. Love cannot 
pause until it has brought out the highest 
nobility In the spirit to which it gives 
itself; cannot rest until it has made final 
happiness sure by perfect purification: 

" Love Is incompatible 
With falsehood, — purifies, assimilates 
All other passions to itself." 

Because God Is Love the universe must 
finally be cleansed to its outermost edge ; 
because he loves men, there must come 
169 



Fruits of the Spirit 

the suffering, denial, punishment, which 
constitute the education of the spirit into 
freedom and power. 

If a man would live at ease, let him 
beware of Love. If he loves a country, 
it may call him suddenly to hardship and 
death; if he love Art, it will set him 
heart-breaking lessons of trial and self- 
surrender; if he love Truth, it will call 
him to part company with his friend; if 
he love men, their sorrows will sit by his 
fire and shadow its brightness] if he love 
some other soul as the life or his life, he 
must put his happiness at the hazard of 
every day's chances of life and death; if 
he give himself to some great devotion, 
he must be ready to be searched through 
and through as by fingers of fire, to be 
called higher and higher by a voice which 
takes no heed of obstacles, to live day 
by day In the presence of an ideal which 
accepts nothing less perfect than itself. 

For Love Is a more terrible master 
than law, and they who follow must 
stand ready to strip themselves of all 
170 



Love and Law 

lesser possessions. Dante looked at the 
terrors of Hell and heard the groans of 
Purgatory before he found Beatrice wait- 
ing to walk beside him In the Ineffable 
sweetness and peace of Paradise; for the 
keys of the heavenly place were in the 
hands of Love. 



m 



The Best Service 

MARCUS AURELIUS, who had 
many serious things to say about 
the most serious crises in life, and whose 
high virtue and loyalty to noble ideals of 
duty have reinforced and strengthened 
some of the best men and women in all 
subsequent ages, had much to say also 
along the lines of the every-day practice 
of humble virtues; for he was eminently 
a wise man and knew that greatness is 
built up, not by single efforts in striking 
crises, but by the repetition of small acts 
in every-day experiences. He wrote: 
" Begin the morning by saying to thyself, 
I shall meet with the busybody, the un- 
grateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, un- 
social. All these things happen to them 
by reason of their ignorance of what is 
good and evil. But I, who have seen the 
nature of the good that it is beautiful, 
and of the bad that it is ugly, and the 
172 



The Best Service 

nature of him who does wrong, that it is 
akin to me, not only of the same blood or 
seed, but that it participates in the same 
intelligence and the same portion of the 
divinity, I can neither be Injured by any 
of them, for no one can fix on me what 
is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kins- 
man, nor hate him." 

This is a paragraph from what might 
be called the working philosophy of an 
independent and gracious life — the life 
of the man or woman who meets freely 
the disagreeable things of the world, the 
ungracious, repellent, and mean persons 
of whom society contains so many, but 
refuses to be affected by them. It is a 
part of a gracious and beautiful life to 
turn the edge of gossip, of cynicism, of 
envy, and of hatred by keeping resolutely 
out of the mood in which these motives 
and feelings are possible. The busybody 
who has evil things to hint and base 
things to tell of others succumbs to the 
rebuke of silence, and the stream of mis- 
representation dries up in the atmosphere 
173 



Fruits of the Spirit 

of unspoken condemnation. The en- 
vious find the air which surrounds a gen- 
erous soul uncongenial, and the ungrate- 
ful and arrogant are driven back upon 
themselves In the presence of those to 
whom gratitude, humility, and generosity 
of judgment are habitual. One may go 
through life almost silent and yet change 
the atmosphere of the road along which 
he travels; for to express one's nature 
it is often unnecessary to speak. Kind- 
ness, generosity, and a spirit of unselfish- 
ness escape from some men and women 
in their most silent moods and pervade 
the places In which they are. It is mat- 
ter of no consequence to us that those 
about us are ungenerous, envious, and 
bearers of false tales. There Is no rea- 
son why we should descend from the hill- 
sides on which we live Into the swamp 
because other men and women like the 
miasma. No man need be Ignoble In this 
world because the world is full of Igno- 
ble people; for, as Marcus Aurellus 
points out, those who love the higher 
174 



The Best Service 

things love them because they have seen 
how beautiful they are, and those who 
stand for the baser things stand for them 
because they have not seen their ugliness. 
The man who looks at a beautiful view 
from the side of a mountain ought to be 
very tender of the blind man who finds 
nothing but the roughness of the road 
and the bitterness of his lack of vision. 
There are many people to whom life is 
mean and small because they have never 
seen the nobler side of It. Such men and 
women are to be pitied even more than 
they are to be condemned, and the way to 
serve them is to open their eyes. 

The eyes of the blind are never opened 
by violence, and the best way to persuade 
other men to cease bearing tales, using 
envious speech, and forgetting the debt 
of gratitude is to show forth day by 
day the beauty of appreciative speech, of 
generous recognition, and of that kindly 
interpretation which puts the best light 
on character and deeds. If it be true 
that a good deed shines like a light In 
175 



Fruits of the Spirit 

the world, it is much more true that a 
beautiful character is like a beacon; it 
not only illuminates, but it also warns and 
guides. It shines brightest when the 
clouds are black about it and the earth 
is hidden from view by the darkness. 
The most profound influence exercised by 
the loving and the devoted is uncon- 
sciously put forth. They serve others 
when they are unaware that any virtue 
passes from the hem of their garments; 
and the chief concern of a man or woman 
should be, not to correct others, but to 
keep the stream of influence which flows 
from them pure at the source; for an 
example is ten times more persuasive and 
searching than any reproof or direct sug- 
gestion. In a corrupt society a good man 
or a pure woman stands out with mar- 
velous brightness, and the worse society 
society Is, the less excuse is there for cor- 
ruption. Those who charge their faults 
upon their environment, and who miti- 
gate their judgment of themselves by the 
reflection that the standards of those 
176 



The Best Service 

about them are low, fail to see that they 
are passing the severest condemnation 
upon themselves. To have seen the 
light and not to live by it is to sin, not 
only against the light, but against one's 
less fortunate fellows. It is nothing to 
us that others are envious, malicious, de- 
ceitful, and ungrateful; our concern is 
with ourselves. So long as we are gen- 
erous, appreciative, truth-loving, we may 
let the world take care of itself; we shall 
have rendered it our best service. 



177 



A Secret of Youth 

ONE of the good signs of the time is 
the fact that people no longer con- 
ceive of life as arbitrarily divided into 
periods of time. The women of forty 
to-day do not follow the habit of their 
ancestors, and put on caps and take to 
knitting, under the impression that hence- 
forth- for them there is laid up nothing 
but the profound respect which children 
ought to pay to advanced years, peace 
after toil, and the making of an endless 
series of small garments for newcomers. 
A recent writer in The Atlantic expressed 
the hope that some day the dear old lady 
of silvery hair and quiet gown and the 
ripening and mellow charm of advancing 
years will return to us. Something un- 
doubtedly has been lost, but very much 
has been gained. The old-age limit was 
absurdly premature from Shakespeare's 
time to the time of our immediate ances- 
178 



A Secret of Youth 

tors. Emerson somewhere recalls the re- 
mark of an old gentleman who said that 
he had been born at a most unlucky time 
of transition; when he was a boy the 
greatest respect was paid to old age, and 
now that he was old the greatest respect 
was paid to children. 

There has been a great extension of 
the time of activity for men and women 
since the middle of the last century. Peo- 
ple are no longer ashamed to be about 
and doing their work at eighty. They 
no longer feel compelled to apologize to 
their young descendants for standing in 
the way. They have discovered that old 
age is a relative term, and that, unless 
serious physical disablements or crippling 
disease come, at eighty one may be ac- 
tive without being disrespectful to the 
younger generation or lacking in respect 
for one's own contemporaries. There 
was a great deal of truth in the statement 
of a French writer that the gods made us 
all immortal and that old age is a volun- 
tary matter. 

179 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Age is largely a matter of habit; and 
most people who grow old, in the sense 
of losing their interest and their working 
power, fall insensibly into the slough of 
inactivity because they do not understand 
how to feed their spirit and nourish their 
bodies. ( Youth is not a matter of years; 
it is a nlatter of spiritual condition.) It 
does not consist simply in young muscles 
and arteries that have not yet begun to 
harden; the root of it is freshness of feel- 
ing, vitality of interest, and joy in one's 
work. Men and women become old by 
involuntary mental process; by thinking 
themselves old. They dwell so much on 
the mortal side that they forget their im- 
mortality. Disuse of muscle in any part 
of the body speedily means stagnation 
and hardening; giving up Interest in life, 
going into voluntary retirement, commg 
to anchor with the intention of never put- 
ting to sea again, is Insensibly followed 
by spiritual and physical acceptance of de- 
clining energy and fading interests. The 
mortal must be kept alive by the immor- 
i8o 



A Secret of Youth 

tal; the body kept young by the mind; 
the mind fed by constant contact with 
fresh ideas. The conservatism of old 
age lies chiefly in closing the doors, shut- 
ting the windows, and barring the house 
against the new ideas of a new time. It 
has come to be almost a tradition that 
old people are pessimists, bewailing the 
degeneracy of the later times, and hold- 
ing constantly before the eyes of their 
younger contemporaries the charm and 
beauty of a past age. A little intimate 
knowledge of history speedily cures all 
this. If one is not willing to keep up 
his interest in acting history, if one has 
an open door only for old friends and 
never makes new ones, if one has no com- 
panionship with the later world and the 
rising ideas which are always coming into 
it, his house becomes desolate and he 
falls into melancholy. When the years 
begin to multiply, one must fasten back 
the shutters and leave the latch-string 
out; one must insist on his immortality. 
Elderly people must keep at the head 
i8i 



Fruits of the Spirit 

of the procession In their hospItaHty to 
new Ideas. 

Variety and charm and Interest lie In 
the preservation of freshness. Robert 
Louis Stevenson wrote: " Cling to your 
youth. It Is the artist's stock In trade. 
Do not give up that you are aging, and 
you won't age." In this familiar and 
homely advice Is hidden the secret of 
the artist's power and charm. He never 
grows old; things never become common- 
place to him ; the colors do not fade. As 
a matter of fact, they never fade; It Is 
the perceptions which become duller, the 
Interest which becomes less keen. A 
good many men and women have discov- 
ered that It Is a good thing to associate 
Intimately with persons younger than 
themselves. This Is one refuge against 
old age, but the real refuge Is within. It 
Is the assertion of one's Immortality, the 
consciousness day by day, in all relations 
and occupations, that one is going for- 
ward and not backward; that the world, 
which grows sadder because one's com- 
182 



A Secret of Youth 

panlons go out of It, Is growing brighter 
because one Is pushing toward the dawn 
and not toward the sunset. There Is a 
great mass of misleading and cynical phi- 
losophy about old age. Poetry Is full of 
images of disenchantment created for the 
greater part by disenchanted men. There 
was a profound truth In the old Greek 
picture of the spirit beginning Its life In a 
strongly built house, protected from all 
the elements; finding presently that the 
house begins to be less secure; discover- 
ing at last that It begins to crumble, and 
at the end that It falls In ruins — only to 
leave the man free under the open sky. 



183 



Make the Time You Want 

IF the census-takers went into such 
matters, the return of men and 
women who are anxious to do certain 
things but " cannot find the time " would 
run into large figures. There is no more 
prevalent or pathetic illusion, no more 
delusive excuse and evasion, than inabil- 
ity to find time to do real things in a 
strong way. For time is not found; it is 
made. What we call time, meaning the 
flight of hours recorded by the clock, is 
simply the raw material of which time is 
made. It is mere duration; time is dura- 
tion turned to account, used, directed to 
definite ends. We make all the time we 
really use, and we make it by using it. It 
is a fallacy that men kill time; they can- 
not kill what does not exist for them; 
they simply miss the opportunity to make 
time; they kill their chances. In vaca- 
tion days busy people rest by not making 
time; they hang up the receiver, so to 
184 



Make the Time You Want 

speak, and no call of work or duty reaches 
them; they shut off connection with the 
raw material which, In working hours, 
runs through their looms and becomes 
time; that Is, duration made significant, 
fruitful, Intelligent, beautiful. 

Races that have made no progress for 
centuries are often spoken of as old races, 
and men and women whose years have 
been many and Idle are described as old 
people; with the Implication that age of 
itself entitles races and people to a certain 
authority. The feebleness that comes 
with the burden of years demands the ut- 
most courtesy and the tenderest care; but 
there Is nothing in age of itself which car- 
ries authority or enforces respect. Mere 
duration has nothing in It that claims the 
reverence of men; time, which Is dura- 
tion made significant and fruitful, alone 
wears the crown of that authority which 
rests on ripe thought, deep experience. In- 
ward growth. A man may have length 
of years and be as devoid of wisdom as 
a child of y^st^rday; a race may have 



Fruits of the Spirit 

counted thirty centuries and remain where 
it was when the years began to fly over 
it, as the birds pass over the fields and 
leave no trace behind. It is duration 
transformed into time that counts. 

There is an abundance of this raw 
material if one knows how to change it 
into time. This is not accomplished by 
the rattle of machinery, by rushing about 
from point to point as if one had great 
undertakings on all sides, by breathless 
haste and many lamentations that there 
is no chance to get things done; that is 
as much a waste of the opportunity of 
making time as sitting idle and, with 
folded hands, letting the days slip down 
the western slope of the sky without care 
or thought. It is as easy to waste the 
raw material of time noisily as silently; 
to be idle in a tumult as in a dream. 
Some of the most useless people in the 
world are the most vociferous; some of 
the greatest makers of time are the quiet- 
est. To turn duration into time and not 
let the threads run into a meaningless 
(86 



Make the Time You Want 

tangle, one must have a design, some skill 
in working, and a steady purpose. A 
host of those whose looms never start 
have a mass of designs in mind; the trou- 
ble is that they never decide which pleases 
or interests them most. Another host 
start a design only to tire of it and begin 
another. And a still larger number let 
things go as they may, and " take what 
comes." Nothing comes, because every- 
thing must be made; that is the beneficent 
law of life. Nature takes care that no 
man gets morally, intellectually, or spirit- 
ually rich by sitting still and letting things 
pour Into his lap. Wealth In these Im- 
perishable things Is a matter of time for 
every man and woman; and time is not 
given ; it must be made. If you want time 
for great tasks, for fine growth, for beau- 
tiful accomplishments, for rich resources 
of all sorts, do not wait for it; It will 
never come to you; make It by selection 
of design, concentration of effort, the vital 
skill that Is born of devotion, Intelligence, 
putting one's heart into one's work. 
187 



A Tragedy of the Good 

THE figure of a man appointed to 
die on a certain day and begging 
for a little more time was very familiar 
to the mediaeval imagination, and ap- 
peared in many variations of a story 
whose pathos and meaning even the way- 
faring man could not fail to read. In 
our day thoughtful men pray, not to be 
saved from death, but from what many 
call life. They are so overloaded with 
responsibilities and compassed about with 
what they regard as duties that they have 
become mere automatic machines. They 
keep their engagements and do the work 
assigned them on the hour; they are mod- 
els of punctuality and often miracles of 
executive fidelity; but they are selling 
their birthright of time as if they held 
it by absolute ownership and not in trust. 
A great deal has been said of late about 
the absence of the sense of responsibility 
i88 ^ 



A Tragedy of the Good 

In those who are trustees charged with 
the care of other people's interests, and of 
the tendency of men who control great 
properties to give away that which is not 
their own. This is precisely what a host 
of good men and women are doing 
through a mistaken notion that life Is 
wholly a matter of action, and that the 
measure of service is the number of ac- 
tivities to which one gives a hand. It 
would be just as rational to say that the 
wisest man Is he who has read the great- 
est number of books, and the most learned 
woman she who has taken the greatest 
number of post-graduate courses ;\ when, 
as a matter of common knowledge, the 
omnivorous reader and the omnivorous 
taker of special courses are never wise 
and seldom educated. 

It Is very easy to drift Into devouring 
activities, and many discover too late that 
they have mortgaged themselves for more 
than their value; they have pledged their 
entire capital of strength, time, and abil- 
ity, and have parted with their most 
189 



Fruits of the Spirit 

precious possession — the power of in- 
ward growth. To such men and women, 
depleted by the Incessant drain on re- 
sources which they have no chance to 
build up, and deadened In body and soul 
by the merciless strain of unrelieved ac- 
tivity, the prayer for time becomes a cry 
of acute suffering. Those who are con- 
tent to be machines and are satisfied with 
" keeping things going " will not under- 
stand this experience; but many heroic 
workers know the sense of utter failure 
which comes In the midst of successful 
work; the longing of the soul for time 
to be by Itself with nature and with God; 
to get the meaning out of experience by 
meditating upon It; to He fallow until the 
earlier and the later rains have fertilized 
the soil to the point where life Is ready 
to rise out of It In a great rush of joyous 
energy. 

Men were not made to become ma- 
chines; they were made living creatures, 
and they needi^the nourishment of reflec- 
tion, observation, reading, leisure, pleas- 
igo 



A Tragedy of the Good 

ure. The time that comes to them is a 
gift from God; they are to make free 
use of it, but they can neither sell it nor 
give it away. They must enrich it, mul- 
tiply its earning power, put it out at in- 
terest; they cannot divide it between a 
number of beneficiaries and have done 
with it. It Is for the use of their souls 
as well as of their brains and hands; It 
belongs to the Giver, and it must be used 
subject to the condition which He Im- 
poses. To work so hard that one has 
no time to think of Him is a tragic folly,' 
"no matter how honorable the work may 
be; to give one's self so entirely to ac- 
tivities that one has no time for his soul, 
no leisure for Inward growth, no oppor- 
tunity to let the springs of life fill and 
fertilize the spirit, Is to make a dismal 
failure of life, no matter how unselfish 
the activities may be. In this world men 
are held as rigidly responsible for the 
use of good sense, wise judgment, clear 
Intelligence, as for the moral qualities 
of their actions. Their blunders and fol- 
191 



Fruits of the Spirit 

lies are punished as certainly as their 
sins. The man who makes a machine 
of himself by giving to activity the por- 
tion of time which belongs to his soul 
becomes as metallic and barren as the 
selfish drudge; the woman whose days 
are unbroken successions of engagements 
loses the finer quality, the higher power, 
of her nature, as Inevitably as If she were 
given up to frivolity. There are trag- 
edies of the good as well as of the bad; 
there are failures among those who mean 
well, as among those who mean 111. The 
man who sells his birthright for a good 
cause sells It just as truly as he who parts 
with It for a mess of pottage; and (there 
are few things more pitiful than a man 
become such a slave to good works that 
he starves in the midst of plenty. ) 



192 



Simplicity of Life 

THOSE who read the daily news- 
papers, monthly magazines, and 
current books detached from the older lit- 
erature, the earlier histories, and the rec- 
ords in other forms of the past, must 
feel that this is the worst of all possible 
times, and that the whole world is rapidly 
going to the bad. As a matter of fact, 
looking at the situation in the perspective 
of history, and taking all sides of life into 
consideration, there probably never was 
a more humane, generous, and open- 
hearted period than the present. The 
age does not fundamentally differ, except 
In the scale on which things are done, 
from the ages which preceded it, and 
where it differs it generally registers an 
advance. One radical difference between 
this period and earlier periods is in the 
extension and thoroughness of our knowl- 
edge of social conditions. We know the 
193 



Fruits of the Spirit 

world with a minuteness and accuracy of 
which our forefathers did not dream. 
We know our own country almost as 
familiarly as they used to know their 
towns. We know social conditions al- 
most as well as they knew family condi- 
tions. The result is that we are con- 
fronted by a host of problems which are 
neither new nor more numerous than the 
problems of earlier times, but which, in 
their extent and fundamental character, 
are brought Into clear light for the first 
time. 

One of the prime difficulties of modern 
life Is Its complexity. In this respect It 
stands In striking contrast to many pre- 
ceding ages. But complexity of condi- 
tion Is a very different matter from com- 
plexity of mind. It is a great mistake 
to Imagine that the two are synonymous; 
that simple conditions necessarily create 
the simple life, and that complex condi- 
tions create complex habits of life. As 
a matter of fact, the simple life Is inward, 
not outward; It Is a matter of the spirit, 
194 



Simplicity of Life 

and only to a limited extent a matter of 
outward conditions and habits. It can 
be achieved as easily and it has been 
lived as nobly in palaces as in the most 
unpretentious and obscure homes. There 
has probably never been a more conspicu- 
ous example of the simple life than that 
which was furnished by a Roman Em- 
peror; and any one who has a large 
knowledge of men knows how often the 
complex life — that Is to say, the life of 
confusion — is led by people of the great- 
est obscurity and the smallest means. 

No man or woman need live a com- 
plex life because the age is complex. 
Confusion of thought is an inward con- 
dition, not the result of outward circum- 
stances. An ignorant man is perplexed 
and confused, and, If he has imagination, 
almost overpowered, by the immense 
number of articles In a single room In a 
museum; the curator, on the other hand, 
is perfectly at home in the whole collec- 
tion because the lines of his knowledge 
run through the vast space and range the 
195 



Fruits of the Spirit 

myriad objects in clear and definite or- 
der. That they are numbered by the 
thousands is of no possible consequence 
when one understands where to place 
them and what they signify. The New 
York Medical Journal prints a very In- 
teresting article by Dr. Clement A. Pen- 
rose, of Baltimore, on a class whom this 
physician calls the *' mind-weary; " peo- 
ple who have lost the faculty of thinking 
for themselves, or the desire to do so, 
and are looking about for some ready- 
made remedy for an Inward condition, 
some outward path as a means of escape 
from intellectual confusion. *' How 
many thousands of these poor, mind- 
weary wretches are on the lookout for 
some simple, plausible, easy solution of 
the problems of life that will get them 
out of all Its responsibility! " Nothing 
exhausts the mind like confusion; and 
there are vast numbers of men and 
women who are suffering to-day from 
weariness of mind because they lack or- 
ganizing Ideas of life. This is the ex- 
196 



Simplicity of Life 

planation for the singular prosperity of 
quacks and spiritual pretenders of all 
sorts, and for the flourishing of occult- 
ism, which always reappears when men 
lose their grip on clear, definite, and 
powerful religious convictions. Instead 
of convents and monasteries, society is 
full to-day of all kinds of refuges from 
the weariness of life and from its per- 
plexities and cares; shelters devised some- 
times by half-educated, well-meaning en- 
thusiasts, sometimes by persons of un- 
usual clairvoyant or hypnotic gifts, who 
start honestly and then become humbugs 
when they discover the financial possibili- 
ties of their unusual gift, or by out-and- 
out deceivers and begullers who under- 
stand how to prey upon the credulous, 
and who know how easy it is to collect 
a crowd if one will only stand and look 
steadfastly Into the sky. 

The New York Tribune^ In comment- 
ing on Dr. Penrose's paper, says very 
truly that many people are struggling 
vainly to piece together into a rational 
197 



Fruits of the Spirit 

system the alleged discoveries of psy- 
chology and medicine; that they are 
swamped by a flood of unorganized facts. 
During the last quarter of a century 
information of all sorts touching the 
structure of the universe and the organ- 
ization of the human spirit has rolled in 
like a tide; new vistas of knowledge have 
opened up on all sides; popular reports 
of every form of religion are at hand; 
every esoteric philosophy has its man- 
uals; all the arts and sciences are rep- 
resented on the book-shelves of the 
libraries in a vast number of easily writ- 
ten volumes; political economy and 
sociology are studied by children barely 
out of their infancy under the tuition of 
well-meaning but half-educated men and 
women. When one considers the vol- 
ume of misinformation now distributed 
through society, and the mass of ill- 
digested thinking to which the average 
man and woman are exposed, it is aston- 
ishing that there is not more brain- 
weariness, and that a greater number of 
198 



Simplicity of Life 

people do not fall prey to the delusions 
of the moment — those easy-going solu- 
tions of the problems of life which push 
aside responsibility and settle all ques- 
tions out of hand. Many men and 
many women are bewildered by the num- 
ber of gates through which they can pass 
into different fields of knowledge, and 
try first one path and then another, only 
to come back to the point of departure 
and start afresh, with a constantly deep- 
ening confusion of thought. They are 
eager to understand all the sciences, to 
master the technique of all the arts, to 
know the ritual of all religions and to 
worship all the gods; and the result is 
that they become mere encyclopaedias of 
popular misinformation, but encyclopae- 
dias without order, definition, accuracy, 
illumination. 

The remedy for this confusion is a 
clear recognition that no human being 
can settle all questions, master all knowl- 
edge, or try all experience; that every 
man must select the things which belong 
199 



Fruits of the Spirit 

to him and leave the other things alone; 
that to do anything strongly and com- 
petently involves leaving many other 
things undone; that before each human 
soul lies one path, and that by keeping 
to that path salvation is secured. One 
definite and commanding idea of life, 
resolutely and patiently worked out and 
followed, brings one to wisdom and 
power, while a great number of ideas 
which touch only the circumference of 
one's experience bewilder and confuse. 
He who can be efficient and fruitful 
if he stays where he belongs, becomes 
a mere cumberer of the ground when 
he strays into places where he has no 
real ties. The question for men and 
women to-day Is not whether they will 
understand everything and use every- 
thing, but what they shall resolutely cut 
off; it Is not a question of taking things 
on, but of leaving things out. The ge- 
nius of the simple life lies In accepting a 
fundamental conception of what one Is 
here for. If one has such a conception, 
200 



Simplicity of Life 

it will impose order on the outward con- 
fusion, give one peace in outward tur- 
moil, preserve one from the temptations 
of a thousand voices calling tumultuously 
and discordantly from all quarters, and 
bring that quiet unfolding, that inward 
growth, which is the business of life. 



20I 



By-Products in Life 

ONE of the prime sources of modern 
wealth is the saving of by-products. 
In the days before science came to the aid 
of business everything was sacrificed to 
turn out one major product, and nobody 
reaHzed the enormous waste of materials 
that went on in almost every factory. 
To-day, as the result of larger knowledge 
and of more skillfully devised machinery, 
a thousand things which once went to 
the refuse heap are turned to account 
and made almost as profitable as the 
chief product of the factory. In many 
cases by-products have become so valua- 
able that they have been transformed Into 
major products, and the scrap-heap has 
been converted Into salable property. 
A good many people are still going on 
In the old way and conducting the busi- 
ness of life as If only one or two results 
could be secured. They set out to be 
202 



By-Products in Life 

strong, and therefore they live as if the 
process of getting strength excluded the 
gaining of all the other virtues; In this 
way they throw away the by-products 
and miss great chances of wealth. In 
getting strength It Is easy to get sweet- 
ness as well. The same process which 
makes men and women strong will also 
make them sweet If they will bring Intel- 
ligence to bear on what they are doing. 

Many people have a highly commend- 
able purpose to become truth-tellers; 
but because they discard the by-products 
of tact and sympathy they lose the kind 
of prosperity which makes a man a great 
capitalist for his friends in time of need. 
The world is full of people who work so 
hard to do their duty that they do noth- 
ing else and make the friends of good 
causes as unhappy as their enemies. The 
by-products of duty-doing are good sense, 
feeling for others, and the flexibility 
which arms high purpose and great integ- 
rity with a contagious kindness of temper. 
In morals the by-products are as produc- 
303 



Fruits of the Spirit 

tlve of ease and comfort as In business. 
Many men and women are persuaded 
that " Order Is Nature's first law," and 
strive to obey that law by putting every- 
thing with which they are concerned into 
Its place and keeping it there. This is 
the secret of effectiveness on a large 
scale; it Is also one of the secrets of 
comfortable living. Only the orderly 
man or woman can handle great affairs 
with ease and despatch or be thoroughly 
comfortable in a life of busy and many- 
sided activities. Unfortunately, In be- 
coming orderly some people make them- 
selves the rigid incarnation of a single 
principle, the living embodiment of a 
single method, and are transformed Into 
slaves Instead of servants. Few people 
are more terrible to their associates than 
those who have imbibed the passion for 
order; who cannot see anything out of 
place without internal misery and ex- 
ternal action; in whose hands the spirit of 
a home Is sacrificed for the sake of an 
immaculately clean and orderly house; 
204 



By-Products in Life 

who become so absorbed In pursuing 
method that the spirit of any enterprise 
with which they are connected is often 
throttled. Order, like every other 
method, ought to be generously and com- 
fortably enforced; and one of the by-pro- 
ducts in malcing one's self orderly is a 
certain adaptability to conditions. Order 
was made for man, not man for order; 
and those who are well trained in keep- 
ing things in their place will have the 
good sense and graclousness to allow 
things to be out of their place when con- 
ditions make that state of affairs either 
excusable or necessary. Like everything 
else, order must sometimes yield to more 
immediate necessities. 

There is a still larger host of people 
who are bent on being useful, no matter 
what it costs themselves or their friends. 
Now usefulness is the characteristic of 
all people who achieve anything, either 
in themselves or in society. In an order 
of life which necessitates co-operation, 
activity, and thoughtfulness — the quali- 
205 



Fruits of the Spirit 

ties which make one useful — to be an 
Idler Is to fall In one's primary duty. 
But one ought to be useful agreeably and 
with a certain charity towards others. 
The fact that one drives one's self with 
the spur of conscience does not empower 
one to drive everybody else. Many 
excellent people go through life like 
Alberlch cracking a long lash over the 
heads of the unfortunate NIbelungen. 
There are many homes in which the 
demon of usefulness drives out the spirit 
of joyful consecration to work and duty, 
and goodness Is so violent that it becomes 
a kind of disorder, and virtue so aggres- 
sive that It takes on the aspect of 
a destroying angel. In order to be use- 
ful it Is not necessary to become a slave- 
driver. The by-products of the struggle 
to be useful are patience, the spirit of 
co-operation, the habit of recognizing 
good work, the desire to stimulate and 
persuade rather than to goad and irritate. 
Blessed are the good with whom It Is 
pleasant to live ! 

206 



The Value of Appreciation 

MANY men and women underesti- 
mate the value of expression; they 
take too many things for granted; they 
assume that their affection, or their grati- 
tude, or their sense of obligation, is under- 
stood without words. Such people are 
often surrounded by those who are crav- 
ing some expression of affection, some 
word of approval, some kind of recogni- 
tion. The best work is sometimes done 
with shut teeth and a fixed purpose, in 
dead silence, so far as the world is con- 
cerned, without a murmur of applause or 
a word of thanks; but this is not the way 
in which work ought to be done among 
intelligent men and women, and it is not 
the way in which, as a rule, the best 
work is evoked from the greatest num- 
ber of people. The majority of men and 
women get the best out of themselves 
when they are in a congenial atmos- 
207 



Fruits of the Spirit 

phere. This is particularly true of those 
finer kinds of work which express indi- 
viduality, quality, and personal gift. A 
man may do a piece of mechanical work 
in arctic coldness; he may do it thor- 
oughly In the face of distinct disap- 
proval; but it Is very difficult to do the 
work Into which one puts his heart, and 
which Is the expression of the finest ele- 
ments In one, unless there is some warmth 
in the atmosphere, something which sum- 
mons out of their hiding-places the most 
delicate and beautiful possibilities of one's 
nature. It Is true a man like Dante can 
do a sublime piece of work with no other 
approval than his own conscience, with 
no other reward than his own conscious- 
ness of having done his work with a 
man's Integrity and an artist's thorough- 
ness; but men of Dante's temperament 
are few; and there are a great many 
other kinds of work, as Important as that 
which Dante did, which could not possi- 
bly be done under such conditions. 

It is the duty of every man, not only 
208 



The Value of Appreciation 

to do his work as thoroughly as posible, 
but to create the atmosphere in which 
other men and women can do their work 
thoroughly and well. It is the duty of 
every man, not only to unfold his own 
character freely and completely, but to 
create the atmosphere in which other 
people are able to develop their best 
qualities. There are hosts of men and 
women who depend absolutely on others 
for their finest growth, who have to be 
drawn out, whose sweetness and charm 
never find expression unless they are 
evoked by warm affection or by gener- 
ous approval. The world is -full of 
half-starved people whose emotions are 
denied their legitimate expression; who 
are hungry for an affection which they 
often have but the possession of which 
they do not realize because It never finds 
expression; who have latent possibilities 
of achievement of a very high order, but 
whose possibilities are undeveloped be- 
cause nothing In the air about them 
summons them forth. Such people need 
209 



Fruits of the Spirit 

a summer atmosphere, and they are often 
compelled to live in a winter chill. 
Many of those who diffuse the chill In- 
stead of the cheer are unconscious of the 
Influence for repression which they put 
forth simply from lack of thought about 
the delicate adjustments of life. They 
have never studied themselves, or those 
about them; and so there are thousands 
of homes that are without cheer, not be- 
cause they are without love, but because 
they are without the expression of love; 
and there are thousands of offices, work- 
shops, and school-rooms that are without 
Inspiration, not because they are lacking 
In earnestness or In Integrity, but because 
the habit of recognition has never been 
formed, and there Is none of that spirit- 
ual co-operation which not only gives but 
evokes the best. 

There Is In life no more pathetic fea- 
ture than the hunger for a love which 
exists but never expresses Itself, and 
therefore, so far as comfort, warmth, or 
inspiration Is concerned. Is as If It were 

2IO 



The Value of Appreciation 

not. There is a capital of affection and 
good intention in the world sufficient to 
warm the whole atmosphere, if it were 
used; but there are hundreds of capi- 
talists of this kind who leave their names 
untouched, and who enrich neither them- 
selves nor others because they do not 
know how to give currency to their 
wealth. Love is not to be hoarded, but 
to be spent. It is great in the exact 
measure in which it is given; it returns 
in the exact measure in which it is sent 
away; and society needs nothing to-day 
so much as the use of this unused capi- 
tal. If men of integrity and good inten- 
tions in the world of business would 
manifest their real feeling towards their 
associates and their employees by con- 
stant recognition of work well done, by 
the words spoken almost at random 
which show that a piece of work is valued 
and that credit is rendered to the worker, 
a large percentage of the social unrest 
would disappear; for love is the only 
solvent of the social problems. 

211 



Immortal Love 

ON the horizon of human thought 
three great Ideas rise from the solid 
earth Into the clouds like vast mountain 
summits. For many generations, when- 
ever men have lifted their eyes from the 
little space of ground on which they were 
working, they have seen these sublime 
lifts of the common soil skyward. For, 
dim and remote as these reaches of up- 
land have looked, they have somehow 
seemed to be of the same substance of 
which human life is compounded every 
inch of common earth predicting the mass 
and majesty of the hills. At the begin- 
ning these distant peaks were so remote 
that they were almost indistinguishable 
from clouds, so unsubstantial and vision- 
ary did they appear — dreams sent to give 
a sense of space and range to the dwellers 
in the narrow house of life. As time 
brought that experience which is the de- 

212 



Immortal Love 

posit of truth in the heart by the process 
of living, the massive outlines became 
more distinct, and the dream slowly took 
on the aspect of reality. Generation 
after generation lifted its eyes, and the 
vague forms drew nearer and wore more 
familiar forms, until they have become 
in very truth the hills of God. 

Eternity, infinity, immortality, are, for 
those who look up to the hills whence 
Cometh their help, no longer vague and 
visionary dreams of men tossing rest- 
lessly in the darkness of a night which 
does not bring repose; they are the solid 
realities of a life which finds in them the 
assurance of the full fruition of its divina- 
tions and possibilities of growth. The 
world is haunted by these sublime visions 
whether it opens or closes its eyes; all 
thought and action lie visibly within the 
circle of these encompassing hills. The 
sense of the infinite is planted deep in 
the heart of modern men; the passion 
for the infinite consumes them. They 
have found in music a language subtle 
213 



Fruits of the Spirit 

enough and spiritual enough not to ex- 
press, but to suggest, the infinite and 
eternal as their spirits reach out to fulfill 
and possess themselves; and all art is 
a symbol of the perfection that immor- 
tality brings within reach of the soul. 
The mechanical appliances which lengthen 
the range of the eye and carry the voice 
over half a continent are crude sym- 
bols of the immense reach of the spir- 
itual nature which has infinity, eternity, 
and immortality before it: infinity, room 
in which to bring out all the power, 
beauty, and fruitfulness of the soul; 
eternity, boundless time added to bound- 
less space, so that all the processes of 
growth may fulfill themselves in endless 
progression of flower and fruit; immor- 
tality, the unwasted vitality w^hich flows 
with increasing volume through deepen- 
ing channels and gives the soul the power 
to possess the vastness of space and 
illimitable time for growth. 

These great fields which open on all 
sides of the life of the hour and certify 
214 



Immortal Love 

to the soul its Incalculable richness, the 
illimitable reach of room and time, as of 
a structure not built by hands but rising 
by processes of growth which becomes 
more and more marvelous as they pass 
from stage to stage, are not matters of 
faith and vision for prophets and poets 
only; every man carries within himself, 
not only the evidence of the reality of 
these sublime ideas, but the consciousness 
of the power to possess all that life and 
time, immortality and eternity, offer him. 
So in that mysterious. Indefinable, mea- 
sureless power of devotion, self-sacrifice, 
and consecration which we call love, that 
deep-rooted genius which harmonizes 
Idealism and service, and In the Imper- 
fection of the moment foresees the per- 
fection of the future, lies the present 
evidence of the reality of the great 
visions, the source of the power that 
possesses and uses them. God has set 
eternity In the heart of man; In that heart 
he has also set Infinity; for love Is with- 
out measure of time or magnitude. 
ai5 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Prophets and poets have strained the 
resources of all the languages to de- 
scribe and define it, and have been con- 
tent to suggest a depth and power which 
they can neither sound nor measure; for 
love is as limitless as eternity and as 
boundless as infinity. It Is not a symbol 
of immortality; It is Immortal. It strives 
to bar the door against death as against 
an enemy; but when the door has been 
forced it keeps companionship with sor- 
row and silently walks through invisible 
paths with one who has vanished, but 
with whom love travels undismayed 
through unseen worlds. Every visible 
thing crumbles, changes, and disappears, 
for the hand of time Is on all things; but 
love, which is winged for Immortal flight, 
escapes the tombs in which the ashes of 
the dead lie and the slow. Immutable pro- 
cesses of decay which bring all things 
made with the hands back to the earth 
out of which they are built. It has no 
fellowship with death save as death ful- 
fills the mandates of life and breaks the 
216 



Immortal Love 

bonds of the spirit as it passes from one 
form to another; it is of the very sub- 
stance of life, and moves, noiseless and 
indestructible, through the shadows and 
mutations of the world. Loneliness is 
often its portion and sorrow its compan- 
ion; but death has no power over it. 

In love the passion for the infinite finds 
its outlet and channel, but never its per- 
fect easement and satisfaction; for in- 
finity can never find space for the sweep 
of the wings of love under earthly skies. 
There are no channels of finite service 
deep enough to make room for its flood 
tides. It pours itself out lavishly and 
without measure, but its store remains 
undiminished. In the exact degree in 
which it gives itself as it increased, and 
when it seems to bankrupt itself its wealth 
is multiplied. It goes about in time and 
the world like a child that has strayed 
from home, seeking some one who speaks 
its language, and never finding the free- 
dom of speech which it craves. 

For no language is adequate to the ex- 
217 



Fruits of the Spirit 

pression of love, though all the languages 
which the soul uses have striven to match 
its infinity of meaning with finite words. 
All the arts have spoken for it, but the 
heart of it remains without a voice. In 
music it has found some easement of the 
pain of emotion and passion and yearning 
unexpressed, fof music is " love in search 
of a word." , But all the resources of 
music cannot'utter what is in the heart of 
love; they can only suggest its untold 
wealth of vision, devotion, service, and 
bliss. As the beauty of the dawn may 
for a moment here and there rapturously 
sing in the notes of birds which it has 
awakened and glow in the color of 
flowers which it has summoned from 
sleep, so music makes now and again a 
brief pause in the tumult of the world, 
and brings a sudden and wonderful si- 
lence and peace of eternity In the unrest 
of time; but there is only a sudden vision 
of heaven, and then the earth fills space 
again. 

Love is the craving of the Immortal 
az8 



Immortal Love 

for its own speech; the passion of the 
infinite bound about for the moment by 
the finite; the Immortal soul seeking its 
own and loyally waiting for it, walking 
beside it, pouring out upon it its limitless 
wealth, as it passes through the shadows 
of mortality. 



219 



The Wisdom of Youth 

THERE is a wisdom born of long ex- 
perience in the ways that are right 
and in paths that are sweet which all men 
honor and reverence, for there is some- 
thing that comes to age which neither 
youth nor maturity can command. But 
there is another and so-called wisdom of 
age which has its roots in the weaknesses 
of men, not in their strength, in the fail- 
ure of their endeavors, and in their 
doubts; the wisdom of prudence, which 
hugs the shore of comfort and holds back 
from the great adventures of the spirit, 
which doubts the realities of the higher 
life because no longer in touch with them, 
which challenges every generous impulse 
and chivalrous experiment; which some- 
times recognizes the beauty of high aims, 
but always questions the possibility of 
realizing them; which sees the long line 
of failures, infelicities, disappointments, 
and says to ardent Youth, " Be sensible, 
220 



The Wisdom of Youth 

give up your dreams, take life as you find 
it; be content to be the average man and 
the average woman in morals, efficiency, 
and aims ; the others are only dreamers ! " 
"Behold, this dreamer cometh! " has 
been the cry of men and women who con- 
tent themselves with this wisdom, since 
the beginning of time. But the dreamer 
comes, and once more the morning of 
hope dawns on the world. A few months 
ago in all parts of the English as in the 
German speaking world there were com- 
memorations of the hundredth anniver- 
sary of the death of a man who was 
scorned as a dreamer in his time, so 
beautiful were his visions and so im- 
practicable; but the men who scorned 
him are forgotten, and all the world 
loves Schiller, not because he did things 
with his hands, but because he was con- 
tent to walk through life dreaming the 
noble things that were possible to men. 

This miscalled wisdom of experience 
is the old siren song of worldiness, sung 
in the ears of the dwellers in Mesopo- 

Z2l 



Fruits of the Spirit 

tamia before there were sails on the 
Mediterranean. It Is the philosophy of 
the men and women who have exchanged 
their ideals for their comfort, and, be- 
cause their ideals no longer live with 
them, believe that ideals have ceased to 
exist for everybody else. Such a man 
looks out of the window of his well-fur- 
nished and comfortable room and shrugs 
his shoulders as he sees youth storm past, 
ardent. Impetuous, filled with great 
hopes; and goes back to his fire and 
thinks himself wise, and does not know 
that he is the typical fool of whom the 
Bible tells us, who said, " There is no 
God! " This prudent, calculating, doubt- 
ful attitude toward life would be sound 
if it were not based on the fundamental 
error that there is no God. In " Ham- 
let " the cautious, prudent, careful Polo- 
nius, warning his son against all man- 
ner of danger and counseling him to 
keep away from life, but never telling 
him how to meet and master it, would be 
right, George MacDonald once said, if 
^^^ 



The Wisdom of Youth 

the devil were God. But because the 
devil is not God it is the most short- 
sighted policy in the world. The wis- 
dom of youth, faith, hope, enthusiasm, is 
based on the fundamental fact that there 
is a God, that therefore the best things 
are true, and that the best things belong 
to men and are within their reach if not 
their grasp. There is no dream which 
does not fall short of the reality, because 
there is a God. Youth trusts instinct- 
ively the hidden forces Instead of fear- 
ing them, marches boldly into life Instead 
of intrenching Itself against life, risks 
years, life, talent, heart, as great souls 
have always risked these things. In be- 
lieving that there are few things In life 
worth getting but a host of things worth 
being and a host of things worth doing; 
that it is better to meet with shipwreck 
seeking worlds than to rot In harbor- 
safety! Where is safety, except in doing 
the highest things possible to us and 
going to the ultimate harbor where we 
can cast anchor at last? 
223 



Fruits of the Spirit 

If this modern world Is to be saved, It 
must deepen Its faith, must freshen Its 
hope, must preserve Its enthusiasm. Its 
problems are so perplexing, Its cares so 
many. Its duties so difficult, that nothing 
can save It but a great tide of spiritual 
vitality. What Is needed In private and 
in public life is not so much knowledge 
of what ought to be done as strength to 
do what we know Is waiting to be done. 
Never has the fight between the things 
of the body and the things of the spirit 
been so sharply defined as on this con- 
tinent to-day, because never anywhere 
have the material prizes of life been so 
great. It is Idle to preach poverty to 
men; it is idle to tell them to stop get- 
ting rich; they cannot help It. The 
combination of the genius which God 
has put into them, with the knowledge 
of the modern world and the resources 
of that world, compels men to be rich. 
To preach poverty as It was preached In 
the Middle Ages would be to preach 
suicide to men. To say, " Arrest your 
224 



The Wisdom of Youth 

effort, curb your energy, stop your ac- 
tivity," would mean going backward. 
What ought to be said is not, " You must 
become poorer," but, " You must become 
stronger." The wealth of the world can 
be carried if we only know its spiritual 
possibilities. Wealth Is a merciless and 
brutal tryant if it is a master; it is a 
marvelous servant if it is under the hand; 
and the one real question on this conti- 
nent is whether we are to be the serv- 
ants of our fortune or the masters of it 
as well as its makers. 

The real antagonist to the spirit of 
materialism Is the spirit of youth — faith 
in the things of the soul, joy in the work 
of life, belief in its highest aims, enthu- 
siasm In Its service. Nothing ages men 
like complete absorption In affairs; 
nothing keeps men young like freedom 
of the spirit; it is the letter that killeth; 
It Is the spirit that giveth life. 



225 



Making Opportunities 

IT cannot be too often said to men and 
women of all ages, nor with too ample 
illustration, that opportunities are never 
to be waited for and that they come un- 
awares. Great things are gained by In- 
teUIgent and patient waiting; but the man 
who stands beside the highway of life 
waiting, not for something which he Is 
prepared to receive but for something 
which accident may throw In his way, 
will never be overtaken by Fortune. 
When Fortune comes his way she will 
pass without any recognition from him. 
It sometimes seems as if life were a great 
game, and as if the Invisible player 
against whom all men and women are 
matched delighted In perplexing and con- 
fusing his opponents. As a matter of 
fact, life Is so saturated with the moral 
quality that every step brings us face to 
face with a new test. The great things 
226 



Making Opportunities 

are for the most part so humbly garbed 
that, unless we penetrate their disguise, 
we do not recognize them until they have 
passed and are a long way off, when 
we discern their majesty. In Emerson's 
poem " The Days " are represented as 
appearing with empty hands and in the 
humblest dress; but if a man fails to 
recognize them, he sees, after they have 
passed, that they are queens in disguise 
and that their hands are full of the 
choicest gifts. 

The difference between men and 
women lies largely in the ability or the 
lack of ability to penetrate the disguise 
of the opportunity and detect its true 
nature. As a rule, the great opportuni- 
ties on which success turns come in un- 
expected moments and ways; and the 
great majority of men who have attained 
marked success, as they look back, see 
clearly that they passed the turning-points 
in their career when they were quite un- 
aware that they were on critical ground. 
No one ever knows when his opportunity 
227 



Fruits of the Spirit 

will come; no one ever knows when the 
decisive moment of his life will arrive. 
The great crises are often like a bolt out 
of the blue of a summer day; there is not 
a moment for preparation. In such 
crises all that a man has been doing in 
the way of preparation suddenly bears its 
fruit. He often acts instinctively; he 
does that which he is in the habit of 
doing; and, because he is in the habit of 
doing his best and all his instincts prompt 
him to put forth the best that is in him, he 
seizes the golden moment and does not 
discover until long afterwards that it 
was golden. He meets his great crises 
with clear intelligence and a resolute will, 
and passes it successfully before he is 
aware that it is upon him. 

Opportunities are created by the devel- 
opment of the power which deals with 
them, and they come to men and women, 
as a rule, in exact proportion to the abil- 
ity to recognize and handle them. There 
are of course vast differences of condition 
and abihty between men, but opportuni- 
228 



Making Opportunities 

ties come to all. The difference lies in 
the ability to seize the right moment and 
make effective use of what is thrown in 
one's path. Successful careers often read 
like romances, so full do they seem of 
the chances of life, so purely accidental 
appear to be, at the first glance, the open- 
ings of the gates of success. It is true 
that Malibran happened to pass under 
the window of the house when the young 
violinist, Ole Bull, was practicing, and 
that apparent accident gave the brilliant 
young violinist the great opportunity for 
which he longed; but Malibran would not 
have paused, nor would Ole Bull have 
been sent for, if the notes of the violin 
had not, by their compelling beauty and 
power, arrested her attention and made 
the fortune of the player. It was not 
Malibran who gave Ole Bull his chance; 
it was his own magical skill. Malibran 
furnished the opportunity, but the oppor- 
tunity would have come in some other 
way if the famous singer had not passed 
under the window of the violinist. Men 
229 



Fruits of the Spirit 

and women who could help us are always 
passing under our windows, but if there 
is nothing in us which lays a spell upon 
them, they do not know that they have 
passed our way and we are never aware 
of it. The streets are thronged with 
those who could open the doors, and the 
houses they pass are full of men and 
women who long to have the doors 
opened; but it Is only the man or woman 
of skill, power, training, and discipline 
who can arrest the attention and com- 
mand the chance. The way to secure 
opportunity Is to walk resolutely on the 
pathway along which opportunity comes. 
He who waits wastes his life. He who 
takes his fate in his hand and goes for- 
ward, sooner or later finds the time of his 
deliverance and the place of his achieve- 
ment. 



230 



Face to Face 

THE bitter outcry of Carlyle, " If 
God would only speak again in 
these days as he has spoken in other 
days ! " has risen many times from many 
hearts. God spoke to Abraham, to 
Moses, to Elijah, to Paul, to Augustine, 
to John Knox; why has he become silent 
when the world so sorely needs guidance 
and heartening? " If God would only 
speak! " is the passionate cry of many 
an overburdened man and woman at the 
very moment when God is speaking. It 
is so much easier to hear the still, small 
voice in a past the tumult and turmoil of 
which have died Into silence, than to hear 
that voice in the uproar of the present; 
to see the divine guidance when the long 
path lies clear in history as an upland road 
on a keen November morning, than to see 
it as it unfolds step by step at our feet! 
Moreover, God uses many languages, 
231 



Fruits of the Spirit 

and continually approaches new genera- 
tions of men in view forms of speech; so 
that each generation must master a new 
tongue if it would understand the divine 
message. Sometimes it is a sound like a 
voice out of heaven, sometimes a vision 
of an angel in the night, sometimes a 
dream of a ladder reaching to the skies, 
sometimes the burning of a bush which is 
not consumed, sometimes the roar of 
overwhelming waves and thundering 
heavens, sometimes a breath of consum- 
ing wrath, and sometimes a great peace. 
In a thousand ways God speaks to men in 
an intercourse and fellowship which is 
never broken for an instant; in the circle 
of which all men are included, whether 
prophets, poets, kings, and saints, or fish- 
ermen and outcasts; which includes the 
good and the bad in the same infinite 
compassion and love. 

For God speaks as distinctly and 
directly to the man in his sins as in his 
holiest moments; and exposure, punish- 
ment, and shame are as much and as 
233 



Face to Face 

truly evidences of his presence as honor 
and influence and the happiest rewards 
of the pure life. When sins are uncov- 
ered and men brought to judgment, God's 
voice is heard as distinctly as when the 
same voice said, above the waters of 
baptism, " This is my beloved Son." 
When exposure and disgrace overtake 
men of position and reputation, God's 
voice says, "These are my children; I 
will not suffer them to sink to the lowest 
pit; they shall be saved as by fire." It is 
the infinite tenderness no less than the 
infinite justice that overtakes men who 
have lost the way and are selling their 
souls in the desert of greed and ambition 
and love of power. Happy is the man 
whose evil deed comes to the light and 
confronts him on the highway before he 
has gone over the final precipice into the 
pit; and happy is the community when 
its moral diseases reveal themselves; for 
it Is better to be outwardly loathsome 
for a time than to be inwardly vile and 
no physician the wiser ! God Is speak- 
233 



Fruits of the Spirit 

ing in these recent years In no uncer- 
tain sound, and herein, rather than any 
prosperity of lands or factories or ships, 
lies the good fortune of our time. 
Through the deafening noise of ma- 
chinery and trade and pleasure come once 
more those divine tones which, whether 
in righteous Indignation or in yearning 
tenderness, are the precious evidence of 
the sonship of man and the fatherhood 
of God. The happy hour for the prodi- 
gal was not that which found feasting 
with his fellows, crowned with flowers 
and lying In the arms of pleasure; but 
that which came to him when he herded 
with the swine, and his father's voice 
suddenly called him from the far country 
home. 



234 



The Last Vigil 

A WELL-KNOWN bas-relief repre- 
sents an old man and woman re- 
plenishing a torch. In the stir and ex- 
hilaration of the lighting of the torches, 
in the joy of bearing them swiftly 
through the gloom, or watching them 
as they shine in the mist which lies on 
the highway of life, there is danger of 
forgetting those who have run the race 
and now, in weariness and often in 
great loneliness, are silently waiting the 
sinking of the fire of the torch. They 
are out of sight and sometimes out of 
mind; for there is always an eager in- 
terest at the starting-point and an en- 
grossing absorption in the running when 
the day is at its height; and there were 
once for these keepers of lonely vigils 
shouts of praise, and there were later 
the pain and strain of the race in its hard- 
est stretches. For those whose faces are 
a35 



Fruits of the Spirit 

aglow with the earliest joy of the run- 
ning, or are set with the stern resolution 
of those who have forgotten the applause 
and care now only to touch the goal, 
there wait the same quiet vigil, the same 
lonely watching of the sinking fire. 

Tenderness and devotion to those who 
no longer press along the course are due 
not to age as a matter of time — the years 
mean nothing unless they bear the har- 
vests of true living and store the 
granaries of experience — but to the race 
well run, the work well done, the pain 
and strife and sorrow bravely borne, the 
allotted task finished in faith and purity 
and loyalty. Blessed are they from 
whose hands the torch has not fallen 
nor the light failed in the long trial of 
will and heart and nerve ! They have 
not only made the highway easier for 
those who come after, but they kept faith 
and hope in the nobility of the race and 
nourished the flame for those who are 
waiting to leave the starting-post or are 
questioning, in the bitterness of the long 
236 



The Last Vigil 

trial of strength, whether the race is 
worth running. 

Youth for dreams, maturity for put- 
ting forth the spirit in the endeavor to 
reahze them, age for the confirmation of 
the hope of their reality! In all the 
world there is nothing so beautiful as the 
figure of the spent and weary runner 
guarding with reverent and trembling 
hands the torch received long ago and 
borne with quiet faithfulness through the 
joy and the pain of the years. In the 
confusion of life, when men dash their 
torches to the ground and rush about in 
a frenzy of passion or a chllHng stoicism 
or with denials of the noblHty and reality 
of the race and the meaning of it on their 
lips, the faithful runners not only keep 
their own faith but the faith of others; 
peace and joy are in their guardianship, 
and they bear the common wealth of 
humanity in their hands and hearts. So 
One ran centuries ago and was derided 
and scorned and buffeted, and the light 
he bore was dashed to the ground; but 
237 



Fruits of the Spirit 

in the agony of death he held it aloft, 
and, behold! the ends of the earth are 
lighted by it ! 

But when the race is over and the 
throngs have passed and the runner 
watches the sinking flame of the torch 
in solitude, there often comes a great 
loneliness. The other runners, whose 
feet once trod the same way and whose 
voices were friendly In the darkest gloom, 
have vanished Into the great silence; 
the younger runners belong to other times 
and have other companions even when 
they are most tender and reverential; It 
Is another world than that In which the 
torch was lighted, and there are no more 
voices that share and speak from the 
same depth of experience. 

In the loneliest hour, however, the 
torch remains, and from the torch 
streams the light, however faint, In which 
the past the present, and the future are 
held secure against the environing dark- 
ness. It Is the witness of memory; In 
its radiance dear faces, now vanished in 
238 



The Last Vigil 

the morning Hght, shine as when the glow 
of youth was upon them; hours of happi- 
ness, moments by the way that were full 
of anguish and are now fragrant with the 
sweetness that comes out of sorrow borne 
with patient trust; years of brave en- 
deavor and quiet fidelity to tasks and 
works; the peace which flows from serv- 
ice and the joy of remembered sacrifices 
all these hve within the circle of the 
flame. 

There, too, faint but clear, present 
hope and task and reward abide; will- 
ingness to wait as well as to run, to be 
put aside as well as to be set at the front, 
to cheer the passing runner as well as to 
be cheered, to keep old loyalties fresh 
and sweet and old love young and pure 
in the daily renewal of memory, to stand 
fast as the shadows gather and to guard 
the sinking fire as loyally as one fed the 
rising flame. 

So the soft light of memory and the 
narrowing glow within which duty re- 
veals itself become the symbol of immor- 
239 



Fruits of the Spirit 

tality. The darkness deepens, the world 
grows still, familiar sounds die into 
silence, upon the watcher falls the sense 
of isolation of those who wake while 
others sleep; and, lo ! while the vigil is 
kept the gloom is shot with light, for at 
the closed window the light waits, and 
over the hills come the dawn. The vigil 
is at an end, and in the radiance of the 
morning the torch is extinguished. 



240 



Light on the Way 

THE New Year finds men and women 
everywhere patiently or impatiently 
bearing heavy burdens and facing great 
uncertainties of fortune. It finds many 
more who are either accepting or rebel- 
ling against limitations of situation and 
conditions; it finds everywhere the pres- 
ence of those austere teachers — care, 
grief, and the necessity for work. These 
great teachers, to whom all the race has 
gone to school since the beginning of 
time, wear veils over their faces; but so 
imperative are they, so inexorable and of 
such commanding attitude, that most men 
have come to think of them as task- 
masters rather than friends; as those who 
drive and scourge and command, rather 
than those who are seeking the best, and 
who, in the final unveiling, will reveal 
the faces of the truest because the most 
stimulating friends; for, as Emerson said 
241 



Fruits of the Spirit 

with characteristic insight, " Our friends 
are those who make us do what we can." 
They serve us best who do not flatter, 
but who make us aware of our real con- 
dition, whose influence is to make us dis- 
satisfied rather than satisfied with our- 
selves, and who will not suffer us to fall 
short of the highest of which we are ca- 
pable. It is this divine element in the 
education of men. In all the great rela- 
tions of life and under all Its conditions, 
that makes living so diflicult; for the 
greatness of the art or the knowledge of 
which one Is trying to secure command 
is always measured by the severity of 
the education, and the final destiny of 
all who strive and bear and climb is evi- 
denced by the severity of their training. 
The man who has to do an easy bit of 
mechanical work learns to do it In a 
week, but Michaelangelo, Dante, and 
Beethoven must serve long years of ap- 
prenticeship before the final skill comes. 
The shaping of a soul requires proc- 
esses more prolonged, methods more se- 
242 



Light on the Way 

vere, tools at once more delicate and 
finely tempered than the shaping of the 
most exquisite or the most glorious piece 
of art ever made by the hands of men. 
The highest reach of art is the full ex- 
pression of some experience, emotion, 
hope, or thought of the human soul; the 
highest that an artist can attain is to con- 
vey, by a few symbols, some sense of 
what is going on in the life of a human 
spirit. To shape this spirit, to give it 
its direction, to mold it to its highest uses, 
to bring it to mastery and power and free- 
dom, is, therefore, a far more difficult 
matter than the training of an artist, how- 
ever great, or the unfolding of any art, 
however glorious. This is what the 
school of life achieves; and because its 
tasks are heavy, Its text-books difficult to 
master, its discipline severe sometimes to 
the point of agony, they who bear and 
learn and grow may take from the very 
severity of their training the promise and 
the expectation of a development which 
in its range, its resources, and the influ- 
243 



Fruits of the Spirit 

ences of beauty and of peace which it will 
command, travels far beyond the vision 
of the most audacious hope. 



I 



244 



The Loneliness of Life 

THE experience of one man or 
woman is always the experience of 
many men and women. In the times 
when the sense of loneliness and isola- 
tion is sharpest and hardest to bear we 
are surrounded by those who are shar- 
ing the same loneliness and solitude. We 
cannot speak to one another of experi- 
ences which are shaking our spirits as a 
tree is shaken by the tempest, but when the 
silence is most Impenetrable we are shar- 
ing the deep things of life. If it were 
not so, life would be mere " sound and 
fury, signifying nothing,'^ and individu- 
ality would be the evidence of a broken 
and dismembered humanity instead of the 
realization of the vastness of life as it 
touches the human spirit. 

We are separated, not by differences of 
trial and sorrow, but by our inability to 
interpret trial and sorrow to ourselves. 
245 



Fruits of the Spirit 

What we clearly understand we can ex- 
press to others; but while we are strug- 
gling to understand we are silent, as chil- 
dren are silent in the presence of things 
which are real to them but which they 
cannot understand. The child most ten- 
derly loved and wisely cared for in mind 
as well as in body is often pathetically 
lonely, not because others fail to under- 
stand him, but because he cannot under- 
stand himself. In a world full of real 
things and tangible happenings he is sur- 
rounded by mysteries and haunted by 
the sense of unseen things. The fairies, 
giants, witches, and strange creatures 
with whom children have always lived in 
the half-light of childhood are creations, 
not of their fears, but of their sense 
of things hidden from them. To those 
who love them most tenderly and are 
most eager to understand and help, they 
cannot speak of these things because 
they are baffled by the mystery of it 
all. The mother who sings to her child 
the wonderful song of her tender and 
246 



The Loneliness of Life 

passionate love holds a little stranger 
In arms. 

We are kept apart not by differences 
of experience; we are all sharing the 
same life; It has many aspects and pre- 
sents Itself In many forms, but It is made 
up of a few deep, searching, fundamental 
experiences. Sorrow comes by many 
paths and wears many guises, but when 
It walks with us It Is not as one sent to 
us alone among all the sons of men; it 
is the companion of all who live. Death 
has many ways of approach and Is called 
by many names, but when his hand falls 
on us it Is the hand which has summoned 
all who have gone before us and will 
summon all who come after us. 

In the later childhood which we call 
maturity, although It has gone only a lit- 
tle further In the education which we call 
life, there Is the same sense of environ- 
ing mystery, the same consciousness of 
" moving about in worlds not realized." 
We are only children of a larger growth, 
and the reticence of childhood is upon us 
247 



Fruits of the Spirit 

when we pass through the lonely places 
and wonder whither we are being led, 
or sit In desolation and cannot understand 
why the world, grown dear and familiar, 
has fallen in ruins about us. 

The loneliness of life comes from Its 
vastness; we are Immortal in a world that 
perishes about us; we are stirred by the 
sense of greatness in our souls and weak- 
ness In our bodies; we reach out to In- 
finity In our desires and our hands fall 
empty at our sides; we crave Imperisha- 
ble love now and here, and death robs 
us while we stand guard against him; we 
are all learning the lessons of life, but 
not In classes; each learns according to 
the laws of his individuality, through his 
own temperament. 

The end Is common, the paths are Indi- 
vidual. Sometimes these paths run par- 
allel for a time; often they run far apart. 
Sometimes we can talk by the way; often 
there Is no speech between us because the 
voice cannot carry across the distance that 
separates us. 

248 



The Loneliness of Life 

But below all things that keep us apart 
there is a fundamental unity which pre- 
pares us for perfect companionship; as in 
a thousand schools, pursuing a thousand 
courses, we are receiving an education 
which liberates us for the freedom in 
which we shall possess ourselves and in 
possessing ourselves possess one another. 
( The loneliness of Christ came from his 
perfect knowledge of men and their igno- 
rance of him. He had reached the goal, 
and they were so far from it that they 
saw it only as in rare moments they 
caught far and faint glimpses of it in 
his stainless and radiant life. He could 
speak to them only in parables which they 
but dimly understood, as children • get 
baffling glimpses of great truths which 
cannot be made plain to them; this made 
his life a Gethsemane. His joy lay in 
the knowledge that the disciples were 
traveling his way and that the knowledge 
that would reveal him to them was com- 
ing day by day. The light came slowly 
to them as It comes to us, and there were 
249 



Fruits of the Spirit 

many false dawns ; but the day will break 
in which we shall look Into his face and 
into the faces of one another and under- 
stand. 



aso 



The Credibility of Love 



^' /\ LL the world loves a lover" not 
xJl only because he recalls a brief 
ecstasy in the memory of the multitude 
who are living in the light of common 
day, but because he rounds out to its full 
dimensions the passional and romantic 
capacity of the race. For a host of men 
and women life is a tracery, gradually be- 
coming obliterated, of generous passions 
and great hopes; a fading of the sky of 
dawn into the dull arch of a gray noon. 
It Is not the blackness In life that brings 
weariness and repulsion, It Is the monot- 
onous grayness; it Is not radical skep- 
ticism that blights faith and takes the 
bloom off the days — It is indifference, 
disillusion, cynicism. The root of these 
destructive forces which rob life of Its 
romance, Its wonder. Its perennial fresh- 
ness of Interest, Is in the man, not In the 
order of things; and society has always 
251 



Fruits of the Spirit 

been full of those who, losing the mind 
and heart of childhood, have not real- 
ized the aging of their spirits and have 
thought the world grown old. Now the 
lover, wiser than the children of the 
world, carries the fresh heart and keeps 
his vision securely among the blind. 

" Great men are the true men," writes 
Amiel, " the men in whom nature has 
succeeded. They are not extraordinary, 
they are in true order. It is the other 
species of men who are not what they 
ought to be." The story of the rise of 
men from the stone age has been a long 
record of discovery — the continual find- 
ing of unsuspected wealth and of unused 
forces In earth and air; and It Is quite 
certain that there are hidden from us 
to-day, within our reach or the reach of 
our children, a thousand uses of the 
chemistry of the soil and air, of which 
the marvelous divinations of the last two 
decades have been only dimly prophetic. 
If this inexhaustible treasury of uses and 
adaptations, of force and material, were 
252 



The Credibility of Love 

not matched by a kindred capacity in men, 
there would have been no history of 
science, and the world would present the 
ignoble paradox of an incalculable for- 
tune in the keeping of an Imbecile. That 
treasury never opens save at the touch 
of intelligence, and the rarest things it 
guards are accessible only to the insight 
of genius, so that the story of discovery 
is the story of the discoverer; his growth 
has been registered in the uncovering of 
the secrets of the world in which he lives. 
From the beginning he has been slowly 
or rapidly bringing out of the depths of 
his nature great and heroic qualities; he 
has, with Infinite labor, made a place for 
himself not only with the work but among 
the thoughts of God. And he Is still 
in an early stage of his growth; despite 
the forebodings of the faint-hearted or 
the near-sighted, despite the apprehen- 
sions of those who do not recognize the 
multiplying signs that we are In a grow- 
ing, not In a completed, universe, the fu- 
ture holds more spiritual and subtle gift§ 



Fruits of the Spirit 

in its hands, and men are unfolding more 
and more the capacity to receive and use 
these higher things. In the face of a 
thousand discouraging outbreaks and 
downfalls, men are rising in the scale of 
spiritual living, and there are before the 
race almost unsuspected possibilities of 
greatness. 

The unimaginative suspect the reality 
of the conclusions of the man of insight, 
and In every age the Cassandras who 
have foreseen the approach of fate have 
been rejected and scorned; but the man 
of Imagination Is the only man who really 
sees the world or knows what It holds for 
men. Greatness has so far been incredi- 
ble to small men, and from time to time 
futile attempts are made to explain genius 
as a form of disease; as if the early 
stages of growth could be wholesome, 
and the supreme stage, the final decisive 
planting of the feet on the summit, ab- 
normal! It is In greatness, not in little- 
ness, that nature touches the goal of her 
endeavor; and great spirits are neither 
254 



The Credibility of Love 

abnormal nor diseased; " they are in true 
order." This does not involve a new 
kind of men in the world; it involves a 
higher development of the men now In 
possession of the world. It may be sus- 
pected that a vast amount of what ap- 
pears to be mediocrity is in reality unde- 
veloped intelligence and power, and that 
society needs not so much a wider posses- 
sion of intellect as a higher energizing of 
the intellect It Is very inadequately using. 
In like manner there are immense re- 
serves of passion, devotion, chivalry, still 
to be drawn on; the world is full of men 
who might be great lovers if they knew 
that love is an art as well as an ecstasy. 
There are as many undeveloped resources 
of love In the hearts of men as there are 
undeveloped forces and qualities In the 
world about and the soul within us. Un- 
der the pressure of the tyranny of things, 
in a critical age which distrusts the re- 
ality of great spiritual superiorities and 
is afraid of great passions, those who 
might reap the uttermost harvests of love 
255 



Fruits of the Spirit 

are content with a few sheaves ; they look 
at the glow in the sky of youth as a pa- 
thetic promise of a day which never 
dawned. The ecstasies reported by the 
great lovers they regard as the poetic 
or symbolic expressions of imaginative 
men. To the literal-minded such an ex- 
perience as that recorded in the '' Vita 
Nuova " has no roots in reality; it is 
an elaborate and somewhat morbid fic- 
tion of a great poet. There are many 
who accept the authenticity of Romeo's 
consuming passion but reject utterly the 
sustained passion transmuted into a great 
idealism which has its classic examples 
in Beatrice and Laura. In the preoccu- 
pation of pressing affairs, the absorption 
of vitality in dealing with things, the im- 
agination Is undeveloped and becomes 
atrophied, and the stunted spirit grows 
skeptical of the reality and uses of po- 
etry; and in like manner the failure to 
unfold the power of love by the practice 
of the art of loving makes the maimed 
spirit incredulous of the ecstasies and 
256 



The Credibility of Love 

adoration of those who are possessed by 
the genius of passion. Mercutio makes 
sport of Romeo's intensity of emotion be- 
cause the great passion has not touched 
him; let the faintest breath rest on that 
gallant nature and the scorn of a world 
would not count a feather's weight 
against its splendid devotion. To be- 
lieve in great thoughts and deeds a man 
must share In them; to believe In a great 
passion a man must experience It; for to 
every man come the things which belong 
to him by reason of his alms, loves, faith. 
To the commonplace the commonplace Is 
always present; to those who have vision 
as well as sight the world grows more 
wonderful the further they penetrate Its 
mysteries. To the nature that has never 
known a great passion passing on Into 
a secure and noble devotion the annals 
of love belong to the literature of fiction; 
to those who know what love may become 
in the hearts of the pure and the lives 
set apart to Its service, they are faint 
transcriptions of an experience that lies 
257 



Fruits of the Spirit 

for the most part beyond the bounds of 
speech. 

There is a greatness in love as in mind, 
a superiority which reveals without ex- 
plaining itself, a genius which is as real 
as it is inexplicable. The skepticism of 
those upon whom this divine grace has 
never rested, the cynicism of those who 
have lost the power of love through in- 
fidelities to its nature and laws, the in- 
difference of those who work with their 
hands and are content never to look at 
the sky over their heads, count as little 
as do the blind man's doubt of the reality 
of painting, the deaf man's skepticism 
of the spell of music, the bad man's de- 
nial of virtue. In the art of love, as in 
all things, life is full of the pathos of the 
searching saying that " unto every one 
that hath shall be given, and he shall have 
abundance; but from him that hath not 
shall be taken away even that which he 
hath." 



258 



The Easter Vision 

SIGHT he had, but not vision. The 
things about him stood out with the 
utmost distinctness; every line was 
sharply defined, every feature and shape 
distinctly limned. So accustomed was he 
to entire accuracy of perception, to per- 
fect exactness of knowledge, that he was 
impatient of any blur in another's sight, 
any uncertainty in another's report or ac- 
count of things. Confidence in his own 
judgment had become second nature with 
him; he acted as one who could make no 
mistakes. And this was the impression 
others received from him. All men 
spoke of his clearness of judgment; of 
the vigor and decision of his nature; of 
the weight and authority of his character. 
He was, in a word, the master of his 
world. 

But it was significant that, while men 
went to him for advice in all practical 
matters, no man ever sought his counsel 
259 



Fruits of the Spirit 

In any moral confusion or uncertainty; 
no man struggling to his feet from the 
mire in which he had sHpped ever turned 
to him for help; no man compassed about 
with sorrow and in the presence of the 
supreme experiences of life ever so much 
as thought of him. Exact, trustworthy, 
keen, truthful, the man of clear sight 
touched his fellows only in the world of 
things; when the fortunes of the soul 
were in the balance, he neither saw nor 
felt nor understood. 

To him all these intangible interests 
were as if they were not. He managed 
his acres with perfect judgment, but he 
could not see the landscape which en- 
veloped them; he saw the little section 
of world in which he worked, but the 
universe was Invisible to him. In his 
sight men were born, grew Into child- 
hood and youth, passed on Into manhood, 
did their work, died and vanished from 
sight, and that was the end. He saw 
the outlines of their character with mar- 
velous clearness; he knew where they 
260 



The Easter Vision 

were efficient and where they were weak; 
he judged with exactness of their value 
for practical service; but of their inner 
experience, of their spiritual struggles, of 
the forces and conflicts which give char- 
acter its quality and life its meaning, he 
knew nothing. He was a master of the 
knowledge of things, but no ray of that 
wisdom which gives a man understanding 
of life ever penetrated the central dark- 
ness of his mind. He had sight, but he 
was without vision. 

Now, all the wealth of this man's na- 
ture was lavished on one whom he loved 
not blindly but instinctively — with the 
passion of the heart which gropes after 
those things that It needs without know- 
ing that it needs them. In this woman's 
eyes the man who loved her saw, without 
seeing, the reflection of that heaven which 
was beyond his sight; and in her nature 
he felt, without understanding, the play 
and stir of those spiritual impulses and 
forces which slowly fashion In a mortal 
frame an immortal spirit; and In her life 
261 



Fruits of the Spirit 

he was aware of a wealth of tenderness, 
of devotion, of self-surrender, which he 
could neither measure nor compute. And| 
she became as his own soul, for she wasi; 
vision to him, and In her the mystery and 
blessedness of life was present though 
never revealed. 

This woman died, and the man's heart i 
broke within him, and the world of sight 
lay in ruins about him; for he saw noth-, 
ing save the beautiful garment which the : 
spirit had laid aside; and that, too, wasi 
put out of his sight. He was in a prison j 
of hopeless misery; and many tried to' 
speak to him, but he could not under- 1 
stand them for the thickness of the walls 
which surrounded him; and many strove; 
to release him, but he could not be freed, \ 
for he had locked the great doors from \ 
within. 

In the darkness the man no longer saw i 
the old familiar things, and became as,; 
one blind; groping for the accustomed • 
places of rest and finding them not, for 
the sweet ways and usages of love and; 
262 



The Easter Vision 

missing them. His outstretched hands 
touched nothing, and his passionate long- 
ings returned upon themselves and turned 
to deepest pain; and in his solitude and 
desolation nothing abode with him save 
memory. 

For a time he was as one dead, but one 
dear memory kept companionship with 
him; and In the silence and darkness one 
image was always In his thought. As 
the days went by, that Image seemed to 
fill his soul, and grew more real, and 
touched the hidden springs of life within 
him, and his heart grew tender under the 
spell of the great love with which he lived 
alone in a night in which the earth seemed 
to have vanished. 

As his love deepened, a glimmer of 
hope began to suffuse the night, like a 
faint radiance from a light beyond the 
horizon, and delicate tendrils began to 
climb out of his heart to.ward that light; 
and there came a breath of something 
surpassingly sweet, like a fragrance from 
invisible gardens. 

263 



Fruits of the Spirit 

And the spirit of the man softened and 
stirred, and he lifted his face, and the; 
dim outhnes of a new world slowly dis-1 
closed themselves. As he looked with 
wonder and awe and the yearning of a 
child stretching out Its hands toward thej 
light, this world became more distinct,^ 
and spread around him a beauty such asj 
he had never so much as dreamed of^ 
before. There were familiar objects In; 
that world, but they were no longer hard! 
and rigid ; the outlines were lost in vaster, 
designs and were tender with new andj 
deeper meaning; the familiar acres were! 
folded in a vaster landscape, whose far^ 
horizons seemed to recede into luminous^ 
distances suffused with a light that^ 
streamed from the heart of things, andi 
enveloped them in a splendor and beauty 
which broke out of them like a mighty 
flood of life. 

The man went abroad once more with | 

the heart of a child, and looked up to thei 

heavens that had grown Infinitely tender! 

and benignant, and across the landscape; 

264 I 



The Easter Vision 

that glowed and bloomed about his feet; 
for love had unsealed his eyes, and the 
power of sight had passed on into vision. 
And as he walked he was not alone, for 
one walked beside him whose presence 
was peace and whose companionship 
brought faith and trust and rest. The 
perishing world which he had once seen 
had widened to become the imperishable 
world which love builded in the far 
beginning, and which love enriches and 
enlarges and makes more beautiful with 
the coming of every soul that enters into 
it through the gates of birth and of death, 
for both are the gates of life. 

And as he looked, behold, the places 
where the dead lay were blossoming 
fields ; for in all the reach and being of the 
universe there was no death. Through 
all things streamed the mighty tides of 
life, and in the range of his vision the 
barren places broke into bloom, and far 
as his eager spirit traveled there were the 
stirrings and strivings of tender and deli- 
cate and mysterious things growing in 
265 



Fruits of the Spirit 

strength and beauty. And there was no 
more night ; for in the darkness, as in the 
hght, infinite love watched and waited 
and cherished all things in its immortal 
hands; and nothing was forgotten or lost. 
And he saw the universe traversed by a 
countless host to whom sight had become 
vision; full of the repose of a great free- 
dom and the deep joy of perfect strength- 
fitted to imperishable ends. And in that 
multitude he became aware of those who 
had laid aside all care and sorrow and 
entered into the fullness of life; and one 
moved near him — no longer a memory, 
but a visible presence — who had van- 
ished in the darkness of his great sorrow; 
who had gone out of his sight to live 
henceforth stainless, radiant, and Immor- 
tal In his vision; no longer hidden behind 
the veil which she had worn In the days 
before the revelation, but shining without 
blur or dimness or shadow upon the 
beauty of her unclouded spirit. And 
after all the years of his love he knew 
266 



The Easter Vision 

that for the first time he saw her as she 
was. 

And the air was soft about him, and 
the fragrance of the early flowers was 
borne to him; and Hke a far music he 
heard the bells of Easter ringing above 
the churchyard. 



S67 



The Plus Sign 

THE preacher stood at the front of 
the chancel without book or note — 
a tall, vigorous figure with a strongly 
molded face. Through the open win- 
dows of the little rustic church came the 
breath of the sea and the sweetness of the 
pines. The day was fair and still, and 
the sunshine, falling on the white birches, 
was like the purity of heaven. Un- 
troubled peace filled the wide sweep of 
sky and enfolded the worshipers. There 
was no faintest echo of far-off guns, no 
hint in earth or air of unparalleled tem- 
pest engulfing half the world; there was 
the silence of a world asleep and radiant 
with the bloom of midsummer. 

But there was not an ear in which the 
thunder of battle was not heard, not a 
heart which was not heavy with a sense of 
unspeakable grief; the worshipers had 
entered into the experience of Gethsem- 
268 



The Plus Sign 

ane and were bearing, each in the meas- 
ure of his capability, the sorrows of the 
world. The sea was half veiled by a 
mist that seemed an exhalation of light 
drifting in and out; but beyond, darkness 
rested on the face of the waters and 
blackness of thick darkness lay like a pall 
over the hopes and aspirations of men. 
The earth that had seemed to be rolling 
slowly heavenward had slipped back to 
hell; when the day seemed to be at hand, 
night had come sweeping back; how 
could the world regain the beauty that 
had been ravished, the strength that had 
been poured out like water, the lost treas- 
ures of faith and hope that had been pain- 
fully gathered in the long ascent of the 
race out of savagery? The waste of it 
all was intolerable, incredible, blasting to 
faith, and the preacher, facing the worst 
and sounding the deeps of sorrow, held 
the cross aloft, as St. Paul had held it, as 
the glory of life. It was not the supreme 
tragedy of life, but the supreme unveil- 
ing of the heart of God. The Mountain 
269 



Fruits of the Spirit 

of the Beatitudes was beautiful with 
promises of peace and purity, but it was a 
foothill on the way to the Mountain of 
the Cross. The sorrow of life, ex- 
pressed In the cross, Is not a black shadow 
on a lovely landscape; It brings out the 
beauty of that landscape and gives mass 
and power and terrible splendor to Its 
structure. It Is not a subtraction from 
the sum of living, but an eternal addition. 
It strikes a deeper note and reveals 
a more glorious destiny for men. 
Through the dreams of ease and comfort 
and security It lends a sudden vision of 
things more precious than ease, more to 
be desired than comfort. Infinitely more to 
be prized than security. 

The cross, the preacher said, put a halo 
about courage and gave courage Its spirit- 
ual meaning. It showed how transcend- 
ent are spiritual and Invisible things. 
Men have died by the million during the 
past year; not grudgingly and unwillingly, 
but gladly; they have met death, not with 
shrinking, but with a cheer. In this 
270 



The Plus Sign 

country we are so much In love with life, 
so eager to share its activities and grasp 
its rewards, that we have forgotten how 
slight a value life has simply as life, how 
entirely its dignity and worth come from 
what is put into and taken out of it. 
" One crowded hour of glorious life " is 
worth more than sluggish years. 

Life gets its value from death, for 
through death the infinite continually 
breaks in upon the finite and the immortal 
shines in upon the mortal. For death is 
not interruption but fulfillment of life, 
and the cross, the symbol of sacrifice and 
death, is the supreme discloser of God 
the Father. In the Old Testament he Is 
the Almighty; on Calvary he is God the 
Father Almighty; In the very heart of the 
storm, In the thickest darkness, in the 
most heartbreaking tragedy, the love of 
the Father finds Its hour of supreme 
revelation; and not the Mountain of the 
Beatitudes but the Mountain of the Cruci- 
fixion shines with a light above that of 
the sun. 

271 



Fruits of the Spirit 

In the story with which the preacher 
ended, the French peasant looks back 
across the little village and sees the great 
crucifix, from which the Lord had de- 
scended to talk with him, and as it stands, 
clearly defined against the evening sky, he 
suddenly sees that it is the plus sign glo- 
riously expanded to become the symbol of 
the vastness and richness of life. 



272 



Going Home 

THERE is no picture which touches 
the hearts of men more closely or 
tenderly than the figure of the tired man 
or woman going home at the end of the 
day. The fierce heat of the sun has 
passed, the intense high light of midday 
has softened into a restful glow, the 
strain of effort is over, and the passion 
of work has given place to the peace of 
deserted fields and streets. It was a 
normal instinct which sent the worker 
forth, eager and alert, in the morning; 
it is the response to a deep craving which 
sends him home at nightfall. The re- 
ward of labor is the rest which it achieves, 
and the joy of rest is the sense that it has 
been earned. 

The alternation of day and night is a 
symbol of the order of life in which work 
and rest succeed one another in a beau- 
tiful and health-giving rhythm. The 
273 



Fruits of the Spirit 

worker goes out of himself when he takes 
up his tools; he returns to himself when 
he lays them down at the end of the day. 
He pours out his vitality as the water 
pours out of a hidden spring; if he is a 
real worker and not a mere drudge, he 
gives himself in the toil of his hand and 
his brain, and when night falls his weari- 
ness is not mere fatigue of body, it is de- 
pletion of vitality. Before he can give 
himself again he must find himself; and 
when one goes home he finds himself. 

To a vast multitude of men the thought 
of going home makes the heaviest burdens 
bearable, the most crushing responsibili- 
ties a spur to effort, the most complete 
surrender of ease and pleasure, not a sac- 
rifice, but a price gladly paid for a happi- 
ness which Is beyond price. The strain 
of the day Is forgotten at the door which 
opens into the peace of perfect under- 
standing, the pressure of hours and tasks 
Is relaxed by the sound of a voice which 
is musical with love and faith and peace. 
In such a homecoming there is not only 
274 



Going Home 

the supreme reward for the work of the 
day that is ended; there is also the re- 
newal of strength and courage for the 
day that is to bring new strife and toil. 

The joy of going home is not in the 
ease and comfort that are waiting there; 
it is in the peace that flows from love, the 
stillness that follows the tumult of storm, 
the clear atmosphere in which the dust of 
the highway is laid and th6 worker sees 
again the ends for which he is striving; in 
the quietness of such a home the toil of 
life is not only sweetened but its spiritual 
meaning shines clear again after the con- 
fusion of details has vanished. Under 
the heat and burden of the day the strong- 
est man sometimes wonders if life means 
anything but prolonged strain of muscle 
and brain; in the stillness of home its 
blurred ends, its ultimate achievements, 
shine like the stars above the highway 
when the dust has been laid. 

The home is not primarily a place for 
work but for life ; work lies below and be- 
yond it, but the companionship which 
275 



Fruits of the Spirit 

transforms a house into a home is a shar- 
ing of the rewards of work: freedom, 
repose, refreshment, vision. There are 
houses full of conveniences and luxuries 
in which no one Is at home; the men and 
women who live In them are homeless. 
To such men and women, as to the men 
and women to whom marriage Is a mere 
social contract and the family a mere so- 
cial arrangement, there is no going home, 
no refuge for the spirit, no place of un- 
derstanding and vision. There are no 
more pathetic figures in the world of to- 
day than these homeless men and women; 
restless, discontented, and unhappy, and 
utterly blind to the tragedy of a life In 
which there is no going home. 



276 



The Mystery of Heaven 

THE Imagination cannot go far ahead 
of experience; It can travel simply 
along routes only faintly marked by ad- 
venturous explorers, but It always needs 
a starting-point, and It cannot project 
paths Into wholly unknown regions. The 
word " unimaginable " suggests the limit- 
ation of the creative, pictorial faculty 
which has made progress possible and Is 
the open door through which, as Dr. 
Bushnell said, God finds access to men. 
It Is significant that all attempts to de- 
scribe Heaven end In a luminous vague- 
ness, while Hell and Purgatory have been 
not only suggested but pictured with 
terrifying and convincing power. Dante 
walks the awful paths of Hell with com- 
manding authority; he not only sees and 
understands, but he describes and In- 
terprets, the world of punishment with 
compelling power. And In the world of 
277 



Fruits of the Spirit 

purification, though less dramatic and 
realistic, he is not less at home; he knows 
whence flow the tears of Purgatory. But 
when the gates of Paradise open to his 
unaccustomed feet, the sight is too daz- 
zling; he cannot see for the unfamiliar 
brightness; he speaks as one in a half-re- 
membered dream. His vision has trav- 
eled far beyond his experience. Sin he 
knows, and remorse and pain and tears 
he understands, but he cannot grasp the 
bliss of Heaven; he walks with faltering 
step in " worlds not realized." 

The Milton of " Paradise Lost " Is a 
greater poet than the Milton of " Para- 
dise Regained "; and the Bible, the most 
concrete and definite of books In dealing 
with the deep things of God and with the 
mysteries of man's life. In the Infrequent 
references to Heaven takes refuge In a 
symbolism which the Western reader 
often mistakes for pictorial Imagery, and 
Is rather hindered than helped by what he 
reads. In literature the great sinner Is 
far more powerfully drawn than the great 
278 



The Mystery of Heaven 

saint, and the most pathetic and appealing 
figures In the drama and In fiction are the 
men and women who, by breaking the 
law, have set In motion the tremendous 
tragic forces. The great artist finds his 
imagination reinforced and energized by 
experience when he deals with Satan, 
with Agamemnon, with Faust, with Rich- 
ard III; but his skill falters when he tries 
to paint a Saint John or a Galahad. Sin 
we know, and all the tragic consequences 
that follow it in inevitable companion- 
ship; but the peace which flows from per- 
fect purity, the radiance that shines, as 
the old painters saw, from the faces of 
the sinless, the bliss that waits for those 
who stand at home in the presence of God 
like happy children, lie beyond our ex- 
perience; and, try as we may, we cannot 
give them form or body. When we try, 
we become irreverent and take refuge in 
a kind of sentimental materialism, or the 
Heaven we picture is a golden cloud on 
the edge of the horizon or a shining dome 
hanging unsupported In midair. 
279 



Fruits of the Spirit 

The world of punishment and of puri- 
fication we know, but the world of bliss 
we not only do not know, but it cannot 
be revealed to us; that is the reason why 
the longings of the heart are not met, 
and the cry of the soul for power to 
realize the surroundings of those who 
have gone on into the next stage of life 
is not answered : we are not told because 
we could not understand. A description 
of the heavenly life by one who was in the 
heart of it would come to us in an un- 
known tongue; nothing in our experience 
would Interpret it to us. It does not lie 
even in the power of the Heavenly Father 
to make these mysteries plain to us, as it 
does not lie In our power to make clear to 
the little children we love the principles 
of philosophy, the more abstract truths of 
science, the revelations of ripe Christian 
experience. 

We can know the direction of the paths 
which lead us to that highest plane of 
living which we call Heaven, but we can- 
not see the paths; we can know the ele- 
280 



The Mystery of Heaven 

ments out of which the heavenly happi- 
ness is compounded, but we cannot visual- 
ize the conditions in which that happiness 
is shared; we can neither give power and 
shape to the spirits of those who have de- 
parted, nor dimensions and body to the 
things which surround them. All the re- 
ports of these things which credulous peo- 
ple are asked to believe are crude, ma- 
terialistic, or so vague that they have only 
the substance of a dream. 

Heaven is beyond our power of ima- 
gination, not because it is unreal, but be- 
cause it is a higher reality not yet grasped 
by the mind. All life predicts it; punish- 
ment and purification foretell and affirm 
it; but it waits on our fuller experience to 
reveal it. Mr. Beecher has somewhere 
said that knowledge is given us in this 
life, not to satisfy intellectual curiosity, 
but to aid in the development of charac- 
ter; and Heaven, which rests immovable 
on character both divine and human, 
comes at the end of a process not of think- 
ing but of living; that is what makes it 
281 



Fruits of the Spirit 

more real than the things we know, more 
substantial and enduring than the things 
we paint and carve and describe. When 
the scientist begins to experiment with a 
short circuit of wire, he may dream of 
the time when messages will travel under 
great seas along thousands of miles of 
cable; he cannot foresee the hour when 
they will fly through the air itself. That 
vision will come only when he has mas- 
tered the resources of the wire and his 
experience has given his imagination a 
new vantage ground for further flight. 



iS^ 



. The Possibility of Great Giving 

THE best gifts are never things; the 
best gift is always from within and 
is charged with personality. In the case 
of those who are able to make great gifts 
for the highest purposes — for the teach- 
ing of religion, the discovery of truth, 
the opening of the doors to education — 
It Is often true that the spirit behind the 
gift is more valuable to the community 
than the gift Itself, and the example far 
more Influential In the long run than the 
great sum of money bestowed. The 
highest service a man can render to his 
fellows Is some bestowal of himself In 
sacrifice, work, Influence, Inspiration. 
Phillips Brooks founded no college and 
endowed no hospital, but he is to be 
counted among the greatest givers of his 
time. Other men poured out wealth lav- 
ishly for good and great ends and are 
worthy of all honor for their large- 
283 



Fruits of the Spirit 

minded and large-hearted recognition of 
the mutuahty of all possessions, the com- 
mon fortune of the race, held in trust by 
the few for the liberation and education 
of the many. It was the high privilege 
of the great preacher to give himself with 
the prodigality of a man possessed of a 
vast treasure; to pour himself out year 
after year on the spirits of confused, way- 
ward, starving people, to whom he gave a 
vision beyond the perplexities of the hour, 
a clear view of the right path and 
strength to walk in it, the bread which 
feeds the soul. 

The Great Giver brought no money, 
clothes, or food with him. No man ever 
had less at his command of those things 
of which men usually make gifts; he was, 
during the wonderful years of his active 
life, penniless and homeless; but he was 
incomparably the greatest giver who has 
appeared among men. No one of all 
the great benefactors of mankind has 
approached him in the reach, power, and 
eternal value of his gifts. The secret of 
284 



The Possibility of Great Giving 

his divine generosity Is told in a sentence : 
(he was himself a gift! ) It was not the 
separate and detached gifts he made by 
the way — the healing, the hearing, the 
speech, the loaves and fishes — that 
clothed him with compassion and benefi- 
cence like a garment from the very hem 
of which life and peace flowed; it was the 
complete and perfect bestowal of himself 
that has begun to fill the world with light 
and health and love. 

Here is the supreme reward of growth 
In purity, unselfishness, the wisdom of 
love: It so greatly enriches the spirit that 
he who comes to possess these beautiful 
and divine qualities gains the privileges 
of a great giver. Many men and women 
are perfectly sincere in desiring great 
wealth that they might use It generously 
for others. But great wealth comes to 
few, while the Inward enrichment comes 
to all who invite and hold themselves 
open to It. Every man may become a 
great giver if he chooses; for every man 
may make himself rich In the vision, the 
285 



Fruits of the Spirit 

moral strength, the peace of spirit, which 
are the supreme achievements of life, and 
the most Inspiring, comforting, enduring 
things which a man can bestow on his 
fellows. 



286 



The Long View of Life 

A YOUNG man gets a position in a 
business of some kind, and secures 
his opportunity, which is all he has a right 
to ask for. There are two ways in which 
he can deal with it: He can do his work 
honestly day by day for his wages at the 
end of the week, filling up exactly the 
measure of work assigned to him. This 
will make him a trustworthy employee, 
who can be counted on to do conscien- 
tiously what he Is told to do ; he becomes 
a good soldier In the army of workers. 
Or (and this is the turning-point in his 
career) he can fill the measure to over- 
flowing, pouring all his Intelligence and 
energy Into It, without much thought of 
the amount he Is to be paid. If he 
chooses this way, he presently gets out of 
the ranks and becomes a leader, a cap- 
tain In the army of workers. 

He may be satisfied with doing well 

287 



Fruits of the Spirit 

what falls to him each day, or he may 
push on by mastering the details of his 
business, making himself familiar with 
every part of it, and fitting himself for 
steady advancement by keeping ahead of 
the work required of him. Most men 
are content with what comes to them, and 
remain employees; a few make them- 
selves masters of the secrets, methods, 
and conditions of their business and be- 
come employers. A man fixes his place 
in life by the amount of time and work he 
is willing to put into preparation for 
larger tasks and greater responsibilities. 

In this country few young men need to 
be urged to work harder; for work al- 
ready fills an immoderate and excessive 
portion of the time of most Americans. 
But young men and older men in this 
country need to be urged to plan their 
work on longer lines and to do it with 
greater intelligence. One of the most 
interesting directions which scientific ex- 
periment is taking to-day is that of inten- 
sive farming; this means, not adding acre 
288 



The Long View of Life 

to acre, but doubling and quadrupling the 
yielding capacity of the acres under culti- 
vation. And this is supplemented in the 
business world, especially in the great in- 
dustries, by the scientific management of 
business, the end of which is, by more in- 
telligent methods of work, to reduce the 
labor and at the same time greatly in- 
crease production. These two principles 
every young man ought to study: how, 
without additional work, he can get more 
effective work out of himself; how, with- 
out the expenditure of Increased force, he 
can make himself more fruitful. 

The vital defect of the young man who 
plans his work for the day Instead of for 
the decade is that he works like an arti- 
san Instead of like an artist; he does what 
is set before him and obeys orders Instead 
of looking ahead and making himself an 
expert. He does not apply Ideas to his 
work, but pursues it In routine fashion, 
without individuality of method. The 
problem which the young man who Is to 
be successful, not only In the practical 
289 



Fruits of the Spirit 

but in the fuller and nobler sense of the 
term, must face, is to reduce the expendi- 
ture of physical and nervous strain while 
increasing his productivity and bringing 
out of himself the finer fruits which scien- 
tific methods have developed. There Is 
an enormous undeveloped force In the 
human race that some day, by more thor- 
ough training and more Intelligent use of 
faculties, will be at the service of human- 
ity. As we are now drawing energy 
from the air and the earth to do the work 
and carry the burdens of humanity, so 
some day we shall draw from the unused 
and ill-directed capacity of men a finer 
and greater eflliclency. The end of life 
is not to toil like a slave, but to work like 
a free man, with a vision of what one 
means to do with one's life, with intelli- 
gence of method, with concentration of 
power. 



290 



An Easter Thought 

The Light of Life 

THERE is no record of the earliest 
appearance of the idea of immor- 
tahty; it is older than the oldest history. 
For many centuries men have known that 
death was an illusion — somber, appal- 
ling, often heartbreaking, but neverthe- 
less an illusion; not the end of the drama, 
but the darkening of the stage while the 
scenes are shifted that another act may 
begin under a fairer sky in a happier 
country. In the far-off past, when men 
were looking at the world for the first 
time with conscious intelligence, they 
knew that those who went out of their 
homes did not go out of existence, but 
waited, dim and shadowy, on the bound- 
aries of human life, or haunted invisibly 
the places they loved, or lingered, melan- 
choly and hopeless, but still conscious, In 
worlds as shadowy as themselves. In 
the beautiful fancy of the Japanese, those 
291 



Fruits of the Spirit 

who have vanished from the ways of life 
come back at times to their old homes, 
bringing a deep and tender peace with 
them. To them, as to the Chinese, the 
worship of ancestors means that the dead 
have not only not ceased to be, but have 
gone over to join the greater and freer 
spirits who live the larger and diviner 
life. The Greek saw In every return of 
spring, when the tide of life came flood- 
ing back, the hint and sign of Immortality, 
and treasured his great hope behind the 
veil of the mysteries Into which only the 
initiated were admitted. Savage and 
highly developed races have shared alike 
in the revelation of Immortality, and 
every race, according to Its Insight and 
culture, has given form and speech to this 
sublime Idea. The belief In what the 
scientists call the persistence of force Is 
apparently instinctive; men do not con- 
ceive of an end of the power they feel 
within themselves until they have become 
cynical or introspective or critical In their 
attitude toward life. 

292 



An Easter Thought 

The pale figure which haunted the an- 
tique imagination dimmed the Hght but 
did not extinguish it; the living knew that 
those who had parted from them, and 
whose ashes were piously guarded in 
memorial urns, could still be reached and 
affected by the affection and devotion of 
the living. Antigone, the type of sisterly 
self-sacrifice, faced death that she might 
give her brother's shade rest; and 
Ulysses talked in the underworld with the 
heroes who fell by his side on the plain of 
Troy. The morbid and saddened ima- 
gination of the Middle Ages saw death as 
a grim and repulsive skeleton, the touch 
of whose icy hand meant the passing of 
earthly happiness, the solitary journey of 
Everyman, the awful loneliness of the 
descent into the grave, the judgment seat 
beyond. 

To the freer modern mind, in the , 
fuller and richer modern life, death is 
no pale ghost summoning the living to 
leave the light and warmth of the sun 
and wander disconsolate along the bound- 
293 



Fruits of the Spirit 

aries of being; no grim and ghastly skele- 
ton coming unbidden to the feast and in 
the happiest hour summoning the trem- 
bling spirit to its last accounting. The 
dim shadow and the terrible destroyer 
have vanished, and in their place has 
come the great, benignant, mysterious fig- 
ure of Mr. Watts's " Love and Death." 
The passionate defense of Love, wild 
with grief, cannot hold the door against 
the irresistible strength of the messenger; 
but in that great form, towering above 
the helpless defender, pressing upon the 
door with a purpose that cannot be 
stayed, there is no malice, no antagonism; 
there is a noble dignity as of one come 
from heaven, the minister of an authority 
to which all doors must open, and of a 
wisdom as tender as it is fathomless, by 
which the immortal spirits of men are 
forever guarded from harm. " You may 
kill us," said an early Christian martyr, 
*' but you cannot harm us." There is 
often heartrending sorrow in death, for it 
brings appalling loneliness with it; but 
294 



An Easter Thought 

there is peace, fulfillment, the joy of the 
perfect life. 

What men in the earliest stages dimly 
divined, and men of a larger culture 
hoped for and expressed in noble dreams, 
Christ brought to light. Death was as 
much of an illusion before as after his 
resurrection; but that which was vaguely 
felt or poetically conceived became, in his 
triumph over the grave, a historical fact 
which transformed a little group of weak, 
vacillating men, who shared the moral 
blindness of their race, into a company of 
heroes eager to bear witness in all places 
and ready to face death in all forms. 
They hoped and dreamed no more; they 
knew, and in the certainty of their knowl- 
edge they spoke as those who had put 
their fingers into the places where the 
spear pierced and the nails were driven, 
who had heard the voice speaking that for 
three long days was silent, and had seen 
him walking who was wrapped in grave- 
clothes and laid in a sepulcher. 

In their early conscious life men felt 
295 



Fruits of the Spirit 

that they were not born to die, and that 
death was not an ending but a changing 
of the course, because they were dimly 
conscious of the indestructible force 
within them. In every later age men 
have been compelled to make the same 
great inference to satisfy reason and to 
appease the heart; for if we are but the 
dust of the earth become conscious for 
a time, life and the world are alike in- 
comprehensible. In these later days a 
deeper process of thought and a wider 
observation have affirmed that no force 
ceases to be. And One has lived who 
died as all men die and was burled, and 
came out of the sepulcher not only with 
the light of life undimmed within him, 
but so visibly holy and Immortal that they 
who were most familiar with him feU at 
his feet and worshiped him. 

The light has come, and the faint stars 
of early hope and dream have faded from 
the sky; but mists and shadows still linger 
about the places where men toil and suf- 
fer, and many who sit in the darkness 
296 



An Easter Thought 

of closed rooms and silent homes cannot, 
at the moment, see the brightness of the 
sky above them. Not until the first long 
hours of loneliness have passed will they 
open the windows and doors and look up 
at the heavens. On every Easter day 
there is a new group of mourners, for 
there are newly made graves over the 
whole earth. To those who cannot hear 
the notes of joy In the Easter bells for 
memory of the recent sorrow these tones 
bring with them, the Christ comes, not 
with reproach, but with infinite patience 
and tenderness. He knew not only the 
victory at the tomb, but also the sadness 
of Gethsemane; he remembers that 
human hearts, with all their weakness, 
have also the power of deathless affec- 
tion. He knows that while to him the 
hope of immortality is a massive cause- 
way glowing with lights spanning the 
blackness of the river, to us it is a crossing 
of stepping-stones, of which we see but 
one at a time as we pass down into the 
darkness and mystery of the stream which 
none save he has ever recrossed, 
297 



The Path to God 

THE endeavor to get the results of 
rehgious hving without going 
through the processes, to secure posses- 
sion of the fruits of character without en- 
during the discipHne, is renewed in every 
generation; and the long and unbroken 
history of defeats does not seem to ex- 
haust the credulity of men and women. 
We are willing to do everything except 
work out our salvation. We want a 
royal road to faith ; are not willing to take 
the long, quiet path which is open to each 
one of us. We long for a great and final 
vision of God. We are eager for a com- 
plete and permanent settlement of all our 
doubts. At the beginning of the journey 
we want the enlargement, liberation, and 
certainty which can be found only at the 
end. We forget the significance of the 
divine commendation, '' Well done, good 
and faithful servant." We change it to 
298 



The Path to God 

read, "Well thought," or "Well felt, 
good and faithful servant ! " We want 
to feel the presence of God. We want 
to be able to think our way to him in per- 
fect clearness. We are not willing, hour 
by hour, day by day, year by year, with 
Infinite patience, to so enlarge ourselves 
by work and life that we shall be fitted to 
stand In his presence and great enough 
to realize him In our thought. We want 
strength, but we are not willing to exer- 
cise; we simply wish to pray for It. We 
want peace, but we are not ready to set 
our lives In order. We want trust and 
that quiet faith which Is the source of 
joy and happiness, but we are not willing 
to gain faith in the one way In which it 
can be gained — by patient continuance 
in well doing. 

It Is not by thinking or feeling, but by 
doing — that Is to say, by actual experi- 
ence — that we get the knowledge and the 
command of ourselves. And there Is 
no other way. We create ourselves by 
translating our feeling Into thought and 
299 



Fruits of the Spirit 

our thought into action. There is noth- 
ing more striking in hfe than the gather- 
ing of hnes in a man's face as the result 
of a great experience and a fine work well 
done — the unformed face chiseled by 
work into a strikingly significant counte- 
nance. For a man's countenance is the 
face which nature gave him, molded by 
his own ideals and toil. The sculptor 
does not more certainly evoke a face out 
of stone by the tireless strokes of his 
chisel than the man evokes his force, In- 
telligence, and will out of himself by bear- 
ing the burdens and doing the work of 
life. You cannot tell him In advance 
what he Is; he cannot know himself what 
he is. He must find himself through 
work. The aspiration of the boy who 
dreams of the mastery of art Is a mere 
desire until he learns the use of the brush, 
the secrets of color, the control of his 
hands. The half-conscious energy of the 
youth who feels that the elements that 
will make him a great man of affairs are 
in him is a mere promise until he has 
300 



The Path to God 

taken hold of some kind of business and 
measured himself against men. The 
only road to self-knowledge and power 
lies through feeling and thinking into 
action. In action or experience only the 
man is wrought; there, and there only, he 
comes face to face with himself. 

By action we not only create ourselves, 
but we create God for ourselves. The 
anchorite finds him in no other way; for 
his seclusion is in itself an act. The 
saint finds him in no other way; for self- 
denial, purity, and consecration are deeds^ 
not feelings or thoughts. Truth is slowly 
distilled into men's hearts; for living is 
not primarily an intellectual, but a vital, 
process, and the greatest truths have 
come Into the world, not through the door 
of the brain, but through the door of the 
heart. Love and loyalty, temptation and 
sin, self-denial and redemption, entered 
into the thoughts of men not by way of 
the philosophers but by the path that runs 
through every man's heart. We have 
come to know the greatest things because 
301 



Fruits of the Spirit 

our hearts have been pierced by the great 
and terrible facts of life. Carlyle and 
Tennyson were once looking at the busts 
of Dante and Goethe in a shop window in 
London. ^' What is there in D'ante's 
face that is not in Goethe's? " asked Car- 
lyle. " The Divine," was Tennyson's 
prompt answer. That sense of the pres- 
ence of the Infinite in all human affairs 
which gives Dante's face its wonderful 
impressiveness came not through thought 
only but through experience. It was 
born of solitude, deprivation, isolation, 
banishment. It came to him on the 
lonely stairs in the houses of strangers; 
it was revealed to him in the breaking of 
bread in an alien land. So came to 
Shakespeare the insight which, in the later 
plays, brought into clear view the higher 
processes of character and revealed such 
a deep and beautiful vision of life; so 
came Phillips Brooks's power of minis- 
tering to men and women of all degrees 
of experience and culture. 

Life itself is the teacher of the proph- 
302 



The Path to God 

ets and poets, the saints and martyrs. 
We cannot silence our doubts by thinking, 
we cannot find God by searching; but 
we can do his will, and then we shall know 
his doctrine. We create God for our- 
selves, and we create ourselves by action, 
by passing through feeling to thought Into 
the world of deeds. We keep In his 
presence by doing the work and living the 
life of faith. There Is no baffling mys- 
tery about all this; for the clouds and 
darkness which surround a man do not 
make the path at his feet invisible or un- 
certain; and that path leads through 
rough places and smooth, sometimes in 
light and sometimes in darkness, to the 
summit. All that a man needs to do is to 
keep his feet In It. The road Is as open 
to the humblest as to the greatest; and the 
most obscure often find themselves on 
those higher peaks where the divine 
vision Is most distinct. 



303 



The Peace of Christ 

THE peace of God is not only a 
familiar but a comprehensible 
phrase, for God is not only all-wise but 
all-powerful, and Is therefore above all 
the momentary storms, the passing strug- 
gles, which sweep the world with a brief 
fury or trouble the souls of men as they 
pass from one stage of growth to another. 
From the top of a hill on a summer day 
one may often watch the clouds gather 
and sweep across the landscape, black and 
ominous, dropping bolts of fire as they 
pass; while far behind the brief rage of 
the tempest and far ahead of It He smil- 
ing fields and men at work In them, and 
overhead the heavens abide In undlmmed 
splendor of light. So God abides above 
the changes of tides and times, the forces 
of air and earth striving for harmony 
through continual readjustment of con- 
ditions. 

304 



The Peace of Christ 

But the peace of Christ is more diffi- 
cuh to understand. He was in the very 
center of the storms ; again and again they 
broke on his path; again and again they 
found him sohtary and without visible 
shelter. He dealt first, foremost, and al- 
ways with the tempests that ravage the 
world; with the awful blackness of sin, 
the tragic source of half the devastating 
storms that rage on the earth ; with those 
temptations which bring mighty tossings 
of the soul with them; with the miseries, 
sorrows, and appalling pains of humanity 
which often overshadow the sensitive and 
sympathetic spirit with darkness like a 
cloud. The shadow of a cross always 
traveled before him. And yet, in the 
center of the storm of life, in the very 
path of oncoming tempests, the peace of 
Christ remained unbroken. More than 
this : his peace was not only sufficient for 
himself, it was so deep and wide that he 
was eager to share it with all men. In 
the heart of the storm he could say, 
" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give 
305 



Fruits of the Spirit 

unto you." If there is one scene in his 
life which more dramatically than any 
other interprets his attitude towards men, 
it is his quiet sleep in the storm, his calm 
hushing of its fury. 

And he told the secret of his peace 
when he promised to leave it behind him 
in the world: "Let not your heart be 
troubled, neither let it be afraid. ... I 
go unto the Father." These words were 
spoken to men who were only beginning 
to understand the Master whose mighty 
works and mightier words and still 
mightier spirit they had been learning for 
almost three years. He had told them 
that he was in the Father and the Father 
was in him, and they could get but a faint 
glimmering of his meaning. If he had 
said that he had never left the Father, 
they would not have understood, though 
it would have been simple truth. In all 
the vicissitudes of his earthly life, alike 
when he was in the fellowship of Martha 
and Mary and when he stood beside the 
woman taken in the very act of sin, Jesus 
306 



The Peace of Christ 

was with his Father; the vileness of the 
world did not for a moment separate the 
Son from the Father; rather it brought 
them together, for where the need was 
greatest there the Christ was most divine ; 
where the blackness of the tempest was 
most appalling there the Light of the 
World shone most gloriously. 

In all the storms through which he 
passed there is no evidence that the heart 
of Christ was ever troubled, but there is 
evidence that it was sore and sorrowful; 
in the presence of death he was not dis- 
mayed, not even perplexed; but he wept! 
The peace he left to those who believe in 
him is not respite from the pains of loss 
and sorrow; it is not freedom from uncer- 
tainty, and the trial of waiting for light 
in dark places, and for leading in the con- 
fusion of the world. When peace comes 
between warring nations, or between 
groups of men whose interests seem to be 
antagonistic, a deep sense of rest and se- 
curity follows; but the pains and burdens 
and perplexities of life are not at an end. 
307 



Fruits of the Spirit 

Peace does not mean a solution of all the 
problems; it means the absence of con- 
flict and the quietude In which those prob- 
lems can be faced and solved. The peace 
of Christ was not escape from anxieties 
and pain; it was a companionship with the 
Father which set at rest all fear, all 
doubt, all conflict of wills. The Father 
who was above the storms and the Son 
who was in the heart of them were one in 
spirit, purpose, nature; the clouds and 
darkness did not hide either from the 
other. The peace which Christ left for 
us is not freedom from sorrow, from 
pain, from uncertainty; It Is the ending of 
conflict between God's will and our will, 
deliverance from fear, rest in the love and 
power of God. 



308 



Character First 

**OlAFETY first" is a sound maxim 
O if the meaning of safety is 
clearly understood. Where the care of 
human life is the highest duty, the su- 
preme responsibility, it must be taken at 
its face value. On railways, trolley cars, 
in the construction of buildings whether 
permanent or temporary, in steam naviga- 
tion, in the protection of water supplies, 
in the regulation of traffic on the public 
highways, the guarding of life is para- 
mount to all other duties, and the words 
" safety first," posted in places where life 
is in peril from many kinds of danger, 
form a sign that this happy-go-lucky coun- 
try is beginning to awaken from its in- 
dolence and carelessness. 

But in guarding the higher interests of 
life safety has a larger meaning than the 
protection of the body; it may, and often 
309 



Fruits of the Spirit 

does, involve the utmost peril to the body. 
It has become to many people a maxim 
of spiritual degeneration. 

Taken in an absolute sense, it becomes 
a shield for meanness of spirit and the 
cowardice which eats the heart out of 
character. Too many Americans have 
changed the maxim to read '' comfort 
first; " they demand that the world shall 
let them alone in the endeavor to make 
life easy and pleasant; they resent any in- 
terruption of what has become, as the re- 
sult of a great prosperity, an irresponsible 
" joy ride." So long as their business 
is not endangered, their homes threat- 
ened, their pleasures menaced, the rest of 
the world may starve and suffer the tor- 
tures of fire and the sword. Other peo- 
ples may pour out their blood like water 
and take up enormous burdens in defense 
of the principles which have made Amer- 
ica prosperous, but these things do not 
concern the " safety-first " Americans. 
Nothing touches them until it disturbs 
their comfort. " Let us eat and drink 
310 



Character First 

and be merry," they seem to say, *' for 
to-morrow we die." It is certain that we 
must all die, but shall death be the tri- 
umph of the spirit or the rotting of 
the body? The comfort-first Americans 
need not fear death, because they are al- 
ready dead; they have sold themselves 
for the mess of pottage. 

The history of the human race in this 
world has been one sweeping condemna- 
tion of the " safety-first " conception of 
life. In the sight of God, it Is evident, 
the first principle of safety is contempt 
for comfort and readiness to lay down 
life for a hundred things that are a thou- 
sand times more important. As it is re- 
vealed in the structure of life the will of 
God is expressed in the maxim, " Char- 
acter first." There is no limit to the de- 
mands of the Christ when character is at 
stake; everything else is mere dross. 
Life itself does not count in the balance 
when character is In the other scale. 
There are great joys by the way in this 
life, but society will become safe only as it 
311 



Fruits of the Spirit 

becomes just and merciful and self-sacri- 
iicing. 

This is not a comfortable world in the 
sense that men may take their ease in it, 
and there is no prospect that it ever will 
be. Until all men understand that char- 
acter is the end and the justification of the 
tremendous education which we call life, 
ease and comfort will be Interrupted and 
destroyed by danger, by trouble, by peril 
of many kinds. To-day half the peoples 
of Europe are fighting for liberty and the 
privileges of spiritual manhood; they are 
dying by the hundreds of thousands and 
they are suffering calamities which leave 
the Imagination aghast and helpless. It 
is a fearful price to pay for the things at 
stake, but it is not too great a price. 
Those who see In the struggle only blind 
fate and needless slaughter utterly fail to 
see the moral grandeur of it, the divine 
contempt which It pours on the safety-first 
rule of living, the overwhelming authority 
with which it asserts the " character- 
first " rule of living. Until men are 
312 



Character First 

ready to forget ease, to hold comfort sub- 
ordinate to right, to be unselfish as well as 
just, the deeps of divine judgment will be 
broken up from time to time and great 
waves of disaster will roll over the fair 
landscape of material prosperity. Safety 
will come when character is attained, but 
not before. 



313 



Meeting Life Squarely 

IT was recently said of a prominent pub- 
lic man that if he could evade a prob- 
lem he thought he had solved it. This is 
the philosophy of many people whose en- 
deavor seems to be, not to meet life 
squarely, but to evade it; not to see diffi- 
cult situations clearly nor to deal with 
them strongly, but to shut the eyes to the 
most ominous and perplexing aspects and 
to find the easiest way out. This means, 
of course, that the real end of living, the 
education which experiences bring with 
them is entirely missed, and the main pur- 
pose of life is defeated. The student 
who becomes expert in the various devices 
by which the drudgery of learning is 
evaded imagines that he is outwitting his 
instructors, but discovers in later life that 
he has cheated himself. The discipline 
of education is not the attempt of the 
school or the college to benefit itself. It 
314 



Meeting Life Squarely 

has been devised and is imposed for the 
sole purpose of helping the student. 

The cares and burdens and perplexities 
of life were not devised to amuse an irre- 
sponsible power. They are wrought into 
the very structure of life, and are in- 
volved in its most vital experiences, in or- 
der that men and women may be taught 
the great truths which are behind all liv- 
ing, and in learning which the discipline 
of living finds its splendid justification. 
A proclamation of emancipation may set 
slaves and serfs free from legal bondage; 
but this is only the beginning of freedom. 
It Is only an opportunity to become free, 
for freedom Is not a gift and can never be 
a gift; it must always be an achievement. 
A man buys his freedom by restraint, self- 
denial, and work. To the criticism of 
an artist that he ought to have done his 
work In another way. La Farge promptly 
said: "That would have been impos- 
sible. An artist, above all other men, 
must work out his genius under laws." 
Neither in the substance of his work nor 
315 



Fruits of the Spirit 

in its technique is he free. He must ex- 
press his own temperament, and he must, 
by rigorous discipline and tireless pa- 
tience, master the method by which at last 
he can freely express himself. " Grace," 
said George Macdonald, " is the result of 
forgotten toil." 

The discipline of life, which many peo- 
ple resent as an interference with their 
right to the pursuit of happiness, is really, 
if one bears it patiently and meets it 
frankly, the only way to happiness. 

This is especially true of such a tragic 
period as that through which the world is 
passing. The shadow of the struggle in 
Flanders and the Balkans covers the land- 
scape of the whole world, and even those 
who are willing to buy peace at any price 
cannot purchase It. Try as they may to 
evade the great and terrible experience by 
shutting their eyes to It, It faces them at 
every turn, and the only escape from it is 
to meet it bravely and to learn what it has 
to teach. 

People are trying to get away from the 
316 



Meeting Life Squarely 

tragedy by taking refuge in amusements 
of many kinds. Miss Repplier has 
pithily said that the gospel of amusement 
" is preached by people who lack expe- 
rience to people who lack vitality," and 
she adds that there is an impression that 
the world would be happy if it were 
amused, and that it would be amused if 
plenty of artificial recreation were pro- 
vided for it. Play of all kinds is as neces- 
sary and legitimate as work. Healthful 
amusements and recreations are essentialto 
physical and spiritual well-being; but they 
must be taken as tonics, not as anodynes. 
This country is not escaping the war by 
standing apart and shutting its eyes to the 
tragedy; on the contrary, the war over- 
shadows every home and lays a tax on 
every income, large or small. Whether 
we will or not, we are our brother's keep- 
ers, and the shadow of his calamity rests, 
and ought to rest, on our homes. We 
cannot stand apart and rejoice in our pros- 
perity; in the long run his calamity must 
be our calamity, and in some form we 
are sharing, and must share, it with him. 
317 



What Can I Do? 

A DISTINGUISHED surgeon said 
not long ago : ^' If there is an 
accident in the srteet when I am passing, 
I go at once and offer assistance. If I 
can do anything, I stay, if I cannot, I 
leave. If I can do anything, no amount 
of blood or mutilation has any effect on 
me. I seem not to see it if I am at 
work; but if I can do nothing, I cannot 
bear the sight of blood; it makes me ill.'^ 
This is probably a not uncommon experi- 
ence with sensitive people ; it is certainly a 
significant experience. In great peril 
nothing gives such poise and steadiness as 
having something to do which must be 
done on the instant. Very few men go 
into action for the first time without nerv- 
ous trepidation; but when the order comes 
that sends them into the thick of the fight, 
danger is forgotten. To be halted or to 
stand at rest under a heavy fire tests the 
nerves of veterans; but the signal to 

318 



What Can I Do? 

" move forward," even when it involves 
every chance of death, releases an im- 
mense and joyful energy. A man whose 
courage is known the world over said that 
he never had any sense of danger if he 
could do something. 

If living were a purely intellectual proc- 
ess, the position of the onlooker who had 
nothing to do would be ideal. Detached 
from the turmoil and disturbance about 
him, he could study his age and his coun- 
try with clear eyes and at leisure. This 
would be true if the eye were an organ 
complete in itself; if to see were simply to 
look. But nobody sees with his eyes 
alone; we see with our whole bodies, so to 
speak. Every use of the eye involves a 
mental process into which memory, judg- 
ment, experience, enter. The whole 
mind sees with the eyes. 

Life is not an intellectual process; It is 
a vital process; no one can understand it 
who does not take part in it. Henry 
Ward Beecher once said that truth is not 
revealed to us to satisfy the intellect; it is 
319 



Fruits of the Spirit 

given to us only so far as it is necessary to 
develop character. We know very little 
about the methods and ultimate designs of 
God in dealing with us, but we know 
enough to enable us to live upright, use- 
ful, and intelligent lives. The vital 
truths come to us as the result, not of 
thinking, but of living. Deeper truth is 
taught us by sorrow than by the reason; 
what we call the heart opens life to us far 
more deeply than does the mind. Words 
which assume the division of our natures 
into separate organs are necessary and 
convenient, but they are misleading if they 
give the impress that our natures are di- 
visible and act through organs that are 
independent of one another. We are in- 
divisible, and whatever we do involves 
mind and body, will, intellect, and heart. 
To understand life we must live; and we 
live, not in thought, emotion, and will 
only, but in action. 

It Is a deep Instinct which makes every 
normal man and woman ask, " What can 
I do? " and that question Is not left unan- 
320 



What Can I Do? 

swered. There is always something to 
do if we are wiUing to do it and do not 
insist on doing something else. Many 
think there is nothing for them to do be- 
cause they are more eager to choose their 
work than to do it; as if the main thing 
were the kind of work a man does rather 
than the spirit in which he does it and the 
character he gets out of doing it. There 
is a share in life for every one; there is 
work for every hand. If you think there 
is nothing worth while for you to do, read 
these words of Dean Stanley: 

Do something worth living for, worth dying 
for. Is there no want, no suffering, no sor- 
rows, that you can relieve? Is there no act of 
tardy justice, no deed of cheerful kindness, no 
long-forgotten duty that you can perform? Is 
there no reconciliation of some ancient quarrel, 
no payment of some long-outstanding debt, no 
courtesy, or love, or honor, to be rendered to 
those to whom it has long been due ; no charita- 
ble, humble, kind, useful deed by which you can 
promote the glory of God or good will among 
men, or peace upon earth? If there be any 
such deed, in God's name, in Christ's name, go 
and do it. 

321 



The Test of Courage 

IN all great crises phrases are born. 
Real phrases are not manufactured; 
they sum up and express great expe- 
riences. Such a phrase is that which was 
used by General Gallieni, quoted in The 
Outlook of June 14 : '* Jusqu'au bout! '* 
When a year ago he was attacked by a 
grave illness which a slight operation and 
a short but immediate rest would have 
cured, he declined to drop his work, say- 
ing, " A chief must set an example in war 
time, and go ' jusqu'au bout! ' '' — that is, 
to the very end. Unconsciously or in- 
stinctively, as brave men do, the " savior 
of Paris " not only struck a great note but 
announced a great principle of life in 
those words. It is the men who go " to 
the very end " who are in every genera- 
tion the saviors of society; they preserve 
it from stagnation; they redeem it from 
corruption. It is undeniable that there is 
322 



The Test of Courage 

a downward sag In society, that It Is Im- 
possible to build society on so strong a 
basis that It will automatically remain 
pure and vigorous. Society must be 
saved In every generation. It Is Impos- 
sible to capitalize It so strongly that It can 
rest safely on Its accumulated moral 
strength. 

It has been shown many times In the 
commercial world that a business house 
cannot be built so strongly that It will go 
on by Its own momentum after the men 
who have created It have passed away. 
It will go on for a time, but with subsiding 
energy, and ultimately, unless Its strength 
is renewed in the newer generations. It 
will end in bankruptcy. The attempt to 
establish society so that It can rest on Its 
oars, so to speak. Is doomed to failure; 
because the " power not of ourselves 
which makes for righteousness " seems 
to take very little Interest In ease and 
prosperity and an enormous interest in 
the establishment of righteousness. 
*' Morality," Lord Morley once said, " is 
323 



Fruits of the Spirit 

not in the nature of things ; it is the nature 
of things " ; and morahty is a daily and 
hourly reassertion, in definition and con- 
duct, of righteousness. 

The testing of courage is not the mo- 
ment when the charge is made with ring- 
ing bugles and the impetus and inspiration 
of a great strain onward ; it Is when the in- 
spiration of action has been lost; when all 
the conditions are full of disillusion, and 
few see clearly on account of the depres- 
sion and monotony; and only they are 
heroically strengthened who are steadfast 
in the faith in which they began the fight 
— loyal to the very end. No one who 
reads the reports that come from the 
battlefields of Europe can have the slight- 
est idea of the stolid and almost despair- 
ing loyalty with which millions of men are 
now living In the mud, standing fast with 
grim determination, though with hardly a 
glimpse of victory. These are the real 
heroes of the war; and these are Its black- 
est hours. In every great struggle, na- 
tional or individual, the crisis comes not 
324 



The Test of Courage 

when the danger seems most imminent, 
but when the inspiration has ebbed; and 
men stand fast, not because they see that 
they are gaining ground, but because they 
have pledged themselves to stand fast to 
the very end. And no careers are more 
inspiring than those of the men who like 
Cavour, have stood year after year, 
through long-continued and paralyzing 
discouragements and defeats, resolutely 
to the very end. Victory waits for such 
men and rewards them. 



325 



\ 



